Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

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From: "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@drdos.com>
To: "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@drdos.com>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk>,  David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se>, Dax Kelson <dax@gurulabs.com>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>,  Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:37:28 -0600
Message-ID: <41796178.7010006@drdos.com>

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

SCO Just sent over a list of contaminated files with a "bill of health" 
certification for Linux that if we remove the identified files
they will certify our Linux distribution as clean. They are also sending 
out some form of statement that we are
not affiliated with them, and that we are competitors of SCO since we 
use Linux. They claim the following and I have
a listing of files, lines numbers, etc. they told us we must remove in 
order for our Linux appliances to be considered
"clean." This info might be useful to others. They have a cert program 
to remove the areas.

Here it is. I can get the line numbers of the file and their names if 
anyone needs it, but the list is very big.

RCU
46 files
109,688 lines

NUMA
101 files
56,587 lines

JFS
44 files
32,224 lines

XFS
173 Files
119,130 lines

SMP
1,185 files
829,393 lines

Total files/lines they [allege] contains SCO source code
1,549 files
1,147,022 lines

If you guys want the specific line numbers and filenames, I will ask 
them to post the specific filenames/line numbers they claim
are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we 
comply with their Linux Certification Program.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jan 'JaSan' Sarenik]

Hi.

I'd like, by this mail, to defend Linus Torvalds, despite
I don't know him personally.

I don't know him personally as I don't know that way yourself.
Anyway, I trust him much more than you and SCO together.
You ask why? He is doing something for the others, not
just for himself like you do (or at least you take special
care to look like you're doing so).

The world is not merely about money.

You wrote to Linus:
> Then rather than be reasonable and honorable about it,
> and say something like, " I have not verified that
> associated intellectual property with this submission
> nor have I received a release of claims from the
> contributor.  I have been informed that several
> companies have conflicting claims regarding ownership
> and I have removed the code from the Linux Kernel and
> asked these vendors to maintain it as separate patches
> until these claims are resolved.", you keep right on
> sending it out, hosting it on your servers, all the
> while Linux Community members make statements that
> even if the code was someone else's "it's ours now
> because it was GPL'd".

How _you_ can say to anyone else what he/she should do?
Even if it was like you have imaginated, there are
thousands of Linux developers. Why are you putting
on Linus?!

Thousands of developers, from which everyone is responsible
for _himself_. They are all the same. They are people.
Born here, on this planet. Taught day by day how to
live here, how to survive, how to enjoy life.

Do you at least get my idea? Did you get idea of the
other defending mails from the other people which you
recieved (either as a part of mailing-list discussion
or personal)? The difference is, we try to look on things
like you say we should, you don't even try to look on
it the way we do.

> This flies in the face of every precept of contract law
> and intellectual property law in the United States.

Maybe I should not talk instead of Linus, but I can say at least
for myself and many others I know personally: We disagree
not only with copyright laws, but also with state, global
economics, your view of ``mature, adult, responsible
position'' and we try to live our lives the way we think
is the best.

> I don't think SCO has to apologize to you if you are not even willing to 
> take a mature, adult, responsible position regarding intellectual

What IS ``a mature, adult, ... position''? You mean ``position which
_we_[SCO] would like you[Linus] to have?

> property, and even try to work with these people.  You owe them an apology
> for running an IP laundry mat, cleverly disguised as a "freedom for all" 
> open source effort. 

Disguising is when somebody is killing people and saying he's
making them free.

> This is not good leadership or responsible stewardship of the
> IP of others.  No one can trust you if this is how you are
> going to operate, or trust that your effort is free from
> contamination from others.

You don't understand what's so essential for us: The power does
not come from the top. Linus is not any ``leader'' or at least
not in the meaning you used that word in.

By the way, in the part I haven't quoted here, you are blustering
to Linus Torvalds. That's not nice technique and if you think
that while you have great success with it between some other
people, it'd be not so easy in __this__* multicultural, decentralized,
free software community.

* You cannot count us, you cannot point your finger at ``us''
  and if you do so, you're alredy lacking those who don't know
  yet they're part of ``us''. Although we are decentralized,
  we are able to help each other.

   With no regard
    Jan Sarenik

PS(for lkml people):
    This message was sent also to lkml list in hope it will
    be somehow useful and with no intention to be listed on
    ``LKML-best'' and really no intention to say something
    good about SCO or Jeff V. Merkey.
    Good luck and don't worry!

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Horst von Brand]

"Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@drdos.com> said:
> SCO Just sent over a list of contaminated files with a "bill of health"
> certification for Linux that if we remove the identified files they will
> certify our Linux distribution as clean. They are also sending out some
> form of statement that we are not affiliated with them, and that we are
> competitors of SCO since we use Linux. They claim the following and I
> have a listing of files, lines numbers, etc. they told us we must remove
> in order for our Linux appliances to be considered "clean." This info
> might be useful to others. They have a cert program to remove the areas.

It is extremely weird that they send this to you, but are totally unable to
show same to the judge and IBM. Did they also send over the exact basis for
the claims on each of the pieces of code by any chance?

SCOX has ownership interest only over some snippets of code they explicitly
contributed to Linux under GPL while they called themselves Caldera.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bill Davidsen]

Kai Henningsen wrote:
> jmerkey@drdos.com (Jeff V. Merkey)  wrote on 22.10.04 in <41793204.9090208@drdos.com>:
> 
> 
>>David Weinehall wrote:
> 
> 
>>>(Quoting from groklaw wrt that lawsuit:)
>>>
>>>"The judge had a few descriptive words for Mr. Merkey, as you will note
>>>particularly in paragraph 123 - 125 of the Findings of Fact:
>>>
>>>124. In fact, however, Merkey is not just prone to exaggeration, he also
>>>is and can be deceptive, not only to his adversaries, but also to his
>>>own partners, his business associates and to the court. He deliberately
>>>describes his own, separate reality."
>>>
>>>[snip]
> 
> 
>>This was written by Novell's stooge Judge Schoefield. It's total
>>fiction. Don't worry, it will get cleared up soon.
> 
> 
> Ah, yes, like you claimed that commission was looking at the video of the  
> case when it actually wasn't ...
> 
> You seem to be pretty much the personified definition of a reality  
> distortion field.
> 
> Makes me wonder if you *ever*, in your whole life, told the unvarnished  
> truth even once.

I think in one of the depositions he said "I don't understand."

-- 
    -bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
  last possible moment - but no longer"  -me

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Xose Vazquez Perez]

enough,

Can this thread be closed and put @sco.com and @drdos.com
in the black list of linux-kernel ml ?

-thanks-

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

[ Cc: trimmed again ]

On Sun, 2004-10-24 at 07:11, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >Jeff,
> > can you plkease stop Cc'ing me on this thread?
> 
> Linus,
[...]
> >No, nobody I know (certainly not me) is willing to re-license Linux under 
> >anything else than the GPL. Quite frankly, I suspect you'll have an easier 
> >time just rewriting the whole thing.
> >
> I won't be "re-writing" anything.  I've written something different that 
> takes all the Linux device drivers,
> application layer, and a handful of file systems, and drops out most of 
> the core of Linux, and these
> drivers I suspect will get rewritten over time.  Since it's all open 
> source anyway, doesn't really matter.

Yup. And whatever you create will be GPLed completely anyway.

> >And no, the only offer from SCO I'm interested in is a public apology from
> >Darl McSwine.  Their made-up stories about copyright ownership weren't
> >really that amusing a year ago, and now they're boring and stale.
> >
> Linus, you took code from these companies without bothering to check if 

Which is the prime question and has not yet been proved (not even in the
juristical meaning, let alone in the technical/mathematical) - neither
by you nor by SCO or anyone else. Even worse SCO is telling exactly that
since months (without providing detailed or even any reasonable
explanations that hold why one should believe in these words) and all
supporting (so-called) "facts" from SCO vanished and did not proove
anything.
BTW this lead to a verdict in Germany that disallows all of these claims
by SCO.

[ all of the propaganda removed ]

	Bernd, not believing your and/or SCOs empty claims
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Ingo Molnar]

* Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:

> I don't think SCO has to apologize to you [...]

Jeff, you seem to have proven once more that you live in a fantasy world
that has its own private rules of physics, ethics and rule of law. 
While this appears to be a dangerous phenomenon, it is fortunately a
relatively rare one.

Linus has been intentionally, deliberately and maliciously lied to,
smeared and mislead for more than 1.5 years. Linus has not mislead
anyone, let alone lied to anyone. The so-called 'contamination'
accusations that you repeated are just that: unfounded accusations. A
simple question: do you know the concept of "truth"? Another simple
question: do you even care about it? In the world i live SCO owes Linus
more than just a simple apology. I personally find it admirable that the
only thing Linus expects of SCO is a simple apology.

(it is your free choice to join SCO's ranks but it is really not Linus'
fault that whenever it comes to Novell you apparently tick out and start
behaving seemingly irrationally. You should not fault him for happening
to be in the line of fire of your apparent personal vendetta against
Novell.)

(it is also your free choice to rewrite any part of Linux as long as you
respect the license. You are not the first one and you will not be the
last one trying. Good luck with it.)

	Ingo

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Kai Henningsen]

jmerkey@drdos.com (Jeff V. Merkey)  wrote on 22.10.04 in <41796178.7010006@drdos.com>:

> are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we
> comply with their Linux Certification Program.

Judhing from past performance, there is only one thing that makes it  
certain SCO won't sue you.

That is, not to be a customer of SCO.

*Everyone* they sued to date was a customer.

MfG Kai

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Kai Henningsen]

jmerkey@drdos.com (Jeff V. Merkey)  wrote on 22.10.04 in <41793204.9090208@drdos.com>:

> David Weinehall wrote:

> >(Quoting from groklaw wrt that lawsuit:)
> >
> >"The judge had a few descriptive words for Mr. Merkey, as you will note
> > particularly in paragraph 123 - 125 of the Findings of Fact:
> >
> > 124. In fact, however, Merkey is not just prone to exaggeration, he also
> > is and can be deceptive, not only to his adversaries, but also to his
> > own partners, his business associates and to the court. He deliberately
> > describes his own, separate reality."
> >
> >[snip]

> This was written by Novell's stooge Judge Schoefield. It's total
> fiction. Don't worry, it will get cleared up soon.

Ah, yes, like you claimed that commission was looking at the video of the  
case when it actually wasn't ...

You seem to be pretty much the personified definition of a reality  
distortion field.

Makes me wonder if you *ever*, in your whole life, told the unvarnished  
truth even once.

MfG Kai

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jim Nelson]

<removing Linus from CC>

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

<snip rambling nonsense>

> GrokSmear has posted the ruling everyone knows this as well. And guess 
>

<snip more rambling nonsense>

If you wish to be taken seriously, perhaps you might not want to use insults when 
you are obviously trying to act as SCO's representative.

How much are they paying you?

God knows, I wouldn't be a self-righteous, obnoxious prick at another's behalf 
unless I was paid for it.  Lawyers are much better at both being a prick and 
documenting their case - and SCO has more than enough (lawyers, that is) to go around.

But, I can be rude and insulting, since I am not trying to be taken seriously.

Jim

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jon Masters]

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 23:11:25 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:

> I won't be "re-writing" anything.  I've written something different that
> takes all the Linux device drivers, application layer, and a handful
> of file systems, and drops out most of the core of Linux, and these
> drivers I suspect will get rewritten over time.

Are you shipping or providing this to customers?

> Since it's all open source anyway, doesn't really matter.

You must, of course, be aware of your GPL obligations if you were to
be shipping such a system to the world? I would hate to hear that you
were violating the GPL yourself Jeff.

In fact, let's go one stage further with this - Jeff Merkey, *prove*
you're not in violation.

Jon.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Matthias Andree]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> Also, I will contact Allan Sullivan who represents IBM in the
> litigation and let them know I would be happy to handle this an an
> advocate of the Linux Community.

Forget it.

You will not act as my advocate, and just in case this isn't clear, I
herewith EXPRESSLY FORBID anyone to represent me or my opinions unless
he has a PRIOR, WRITTEN and HAND-SIGNED authorization of mine.

I for sure will not issue one to you, but I may provide IBM with a copy
of this and your mail so they can show to the court you're trying to
deceive the court.

Now stop wasting our time and hop off.

- -- 
Matthias Andree
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Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Matthias Andree]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> I'll post the entire listing with line numbers of the files SCO 
> [alleges] were taken from UNIX by IBM and others. 

So where did you put that list up?

-- 
Matthias Andree

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Matthias Andree]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> This was written by Novell's stooge Judge Schoefield. It's total 
> fiction. Don't worry, it will get cleared up soon.

I wonder if the court accepts outside evidence for disrespecting the
court. That by itself is punishable in most legislations.

-- 
Matthias Andree

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Shawn Starr]

Ok, enough Im sick of hearing this, we're NOT interested in your FUD. 

We don't need you or anyone else spreading FUD and SCOs (represented) view on 
here. 

We certainly don't need to listen to YOU spew your crap on here, it's 
OFF-TOPIC for one thing, and another don't troll here.

You've really irritated me at almost 5AM and I have better things to do then 
hear you blab about 'IP' crap.

</rant off>

Shawn.

no, i wont CC him directly.

> List:       linux-kernel
> Subject:    Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout
> From:       "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey () drdos ! com>
> Date:       2004-10-24 5:11:25
> Message-ID: <417B397D.2070106 () drdos ! com>
> [Download message RAW]
> 
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> >Jeff,
> > can you plkease stop Cc'ing me on this thread?
> >
> >  
> >
> 
> Linus,
> 
> I never Cc'd you on this thread.  The person who added you somewhere way 
> back there was
> someone else.    Talk to them.  Beyond this response, I won't cc you 
> ever again.
> 
> >No, nobody I know (certainly not me) is willing to re-license Linux under 
> >anything else than the GPL. Quite frankly, I suspect you'll have an easier 
> >time just rewriting the whole thing.
> >  
> >
> I won't be "re-writing" anything.  I've written something different that 
> takes all the Linux device drivers,
> application layer, and a handful of file systems, and drops out most of 
> the core of Linux, and these
> drivers I suspect will get rewritten over time.  Since it's all open 
> source anyway, doesn't really matter.
> 
> 
> >And no, the only offer from SCO I'm interested in is a public apology from
> >Darl McSwine.  Their made-up stories about copyright ownership weren't
> >really that amusing a year ago, and now they're boring and stale.
> >
> >  
> >
> Linus, you took code from these companies without bothering to check if 
> there were any agreements
> that made certain they weren't contaminating Linux.  You have an 
> obligation under US Law if you
> are doing business in this country to perform due diligence and this 
> stuff.  Then rather than be reasonable
> and honorable about it, and say something like, " I have not verified 
> that associated intellectual property
> with this submission nor have I received a release of claims from the 
> contributor.  I have been informed
> that several companies have conflicting claims regarding ownership and I 
> have removed the code from
> the Linux Kernel and asked these vendors to maintain it as separate 
> patches until these claims are resolved.",
> you keep right on sending it out, hosting it on your servers, all the 
> while Linux Community members
> make statements that even if the code was someone else's "it's ours now 
> because it was GPL'd". 
> This flies in the face of every precept of contract law and intellectual 
> property law in the United States.
> 
> The facts are that there is some code which is the subject of a dispute 
> and you are distributing it, willfully,
> knowingly, and with malicious intent to keep it for yourself.  Whether 
> it's has their copyrights, or even
> their trade secrets doesn't bother you one bit.    I felt like Novell 
> should apologize to me after what
> happened with them, but in all the crap with Novell, I never took their 
> source code, and now that
> GrokSmear has posted the ruling everyone knows this as well. And guess 
> what, I was in the wrong. 
> I was doing exactly what you are doing.  Using lawyers and sophistry to 
> conceal taking their
> trade secrets and using them for myself, and I paid dearly for it.   You 
> will too, and so will a
> lot of other people who depend on you.
> 
> I don't think SCO has to apologize to you if you are not even willing to 
> take a mature, adult, responsible
> position regarding intellectual property, and even try to work with 
> these people.  You owe them an apology
> for running an IP laundry mat, cleverly disguised as a "freedom for all" 
> open source effort. 
> 
> This is not good leadership or responsible stewardship of the IP of 
> others.  No one can trust you
> if this is how you are going to operate, or trust that your effort is 
> free from contamination from
> others.  
> 
> >So please just remove me 
> >
> 
> You code has been removed.
> 
> from the cc, ok?
> 
> ok
> 
> Jeff
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
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Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Linus Torvalds wrote:

>Jeff,
> can you plkease stop Cc'ing me on this thread?
>
>  
>

Linus,

I never Cc'd you on this thread.  The person who added you somewhere way 
back there was
someone else.    Talk to them.  Beyond this response, I won't cc you 
ever again.

>No, nobody I know (certainly not me) is willing to re-license Linux under 
>anything else than the GPL. Quite frankly, I suspect you'll have an easier 
>time just rewriting the whole thing.
>  
>
I won't be "re-writing" anything.  I've written something different that 
takes all the Linux device drivers,
application layer, and a handful of file systems, and drops out most of 
the core of Linux, and these
drivers I suspect will get rewritten over time.  Since it's all open 
source anyway, doesn't really matter.


>And no, the only offer from SCO I'm interested in is a public apology from
>Darl McSwine.  Their made-up stories about copyright ownership weren't
>really that amusing a year ago, and now they're boring and stale.
>
>  
>
Linus, you took code from these companies without bothering to check if 
there were any agreements
that made certain they weren't contaminating Linux.  You have an 
obligation under US Law if you
are doing business in this country to perform due diligence and this 
stuff.  Then rather than be reasonable
and honorable about it, and say something like, " I have not verified 
that associated intellectual property
with this submission nor have I received a release of claims from the 
contributor.  I have been informed
that several companies have conflicting claims regarding ownership and I 
have removed the code from
the Linux Kernel and asked these vendors to maintain it as separate 
patches until these claims are resolved.",
you keep right on sending it out, hosting it on your servers, all the 
while Linux Community members
make statements that even if the code was someone else's "it's ours now 
because it was GPL'd". 
This flies in the face of every precept of contract law and intellectual 
property law in the United States.

The facts are that there is some code which is the subject of a dispute 
and you are distributing it, willfully,
knowingly, and with malicious intent to keep it for yourself.  Whether 
it's has their copyrights, or even
their trade secrets doesn't bother you one bit.    I felt like Novell 
should apologize to me after what
happened with them, but in all the crap with Novell, I never took their 
source code, and now that
GrokSmear has posted the ruling everyone knows this as well. And guess 
what, I was in the wrong. 
I was doing exactly what you are doing.  Using lawyers and sophistry to 
conceal taking their
trade secrets and using them for myself, and I paid dearly for it.   You 
will too, and so will a
lot of other people who depend on you.

I don't think SCO has to apologize to you if you are not even willing to 
take a mature, adult, responsible
position regarding intellectual property, and even try to work with 
these people.  You owe them an apology
for running an IP laundry mat, cleverly disguised as a "freedom for all" 
open source effort. 

This is not good leadership or responsible stewardship of the IP of 
others.  No one can trust you
if this is how you are going to operate, or trust that your effort is 
free from contamination from
others.  

>So please just remove me 
>

You code has been removed.

from the cc, ok?

ok

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jesper Juhl]

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> 
> Jeff,
>  can you plkease stop Cc'ing me on this thread?
> 
> No, nobody I know (certainly not me) is willing to re-license Linux under 
> anything else than the GPL. Quite frankly, I suspect you'll have an easier 
> time just rewriting the whole thing.
> 
> And no, the only offer from SCO I'm interested in is a public apology from
> Darl McSwine.  Their made-up stories about copyright ownership weren't
> really that amusing a year ago, and now they're boring and stale.
> 
> So please just remove me from the cc, ok?
> 
> 		Linus

Thank you so much Linus, that was a much needed reply.

---
Jesper Juhl


PS. All code I have ever contributed to the Linux kernel is available 
under the GPL *only*.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Buddy Lucas]

[ Removed Linus from the Cc list. ]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 22:42:30 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:
> 

[ snipped insult ]

> Sworn before The Linux Commnity as the Truth under penalty of perjuy
> October 22, 2004 10:41 p.m. MST
>
> Jeffrey Vernon Merkey

Pathetic. Really.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Linus Torvalds]

Jeff,
 can you plkease stop Cc'ing me on this thread?

No, nobody I know (certainly not me) is willing to re-license Linux under 
anything else than the GPL. Quite frankly, I suspect you'll have an easier 
time just rewriting the whole thing.

And no, the only offer from SCO I'm interested in is a public apology from
Darl McSwine.  Their made-up stories about copyright ownership weren't
really that amusing a year ago, and now they're boring and stale.

So please just remove me from the cc, ok?

		Linus

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-10-22 at 16:58 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > Yes. I can do even better.
> > I met with Darl McBride this afternoon regarding the GrokSmear postings 
> > (First time I've ever met him) at SCO's request
> 
> Jeff, 
> 
> the world is watching breathlessly your selfless and devotional efforts
> to rescue Linux.
> 
> I'm answering late because I was requested to meet a couple of people to
> report about your invaluable efforts for freedom, justice and the world.
> 
> The Pope told me tonight in a private conversation, that he's
> considering to beatify you as soon as possible.
> 
> The Nobel Peace Prize Committee called for an unscheduled emergency
> meeting to replace the already choosen candidate by you and Darl.
> 
> The International Law Association want's you to be their honorary member
> along with a PhD honoris causae to honour your unmatched ability to
> analyse a number of complex lawsuits during a coffee talk at SCO.
> 
> Finally I met Santa Claus and he asked me, if it's really a good idea to
> bring you more of the Peyote stuff as you asked for on your wish list.
> 
> I'm awestruck.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> tglx, member of the IPTTA (International Psychodelic Tale Teller
> Association)

Do we have some "Best of LKML" repository somewhere? This one 
would surely get my vote to enter it :)

(Now, if only Jeff would spare us dial-uppers all this wasted 
bandwidth, *that*'d be something I would show gratitude for 
...)

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollar and cents
Pounds shillings and pence
                  (Roger Waters)

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[James Bruce]

Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:

>On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Pekka Pietikainen wrote:
>  
>
>>On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We
>>>will be contacting individual contributors and negotiating with each
>>>copyright holder for the code we wish to convert on a case by case basis.
>>>      
>>>
>>arch/m68k/sun3/leds.c is available (dual BSD/GPL) for the price of two beers 
>>(I believe nobody else has touched it so it should be all mine). 
>>
>>The other files of the port to that very fine architecture are largely done
>>by other people, so unfortunately I can't relicense those.
>>    
>>
>
>Aarghl, a shameless m68k hacker!
>
>And I thought we all did it for The Big Fun(tm), and cannot be bought ;-)
>  
>

With leds.c, that's 13 lines down and only 5982412 more to go at my 
count.  At a rate of one per day it'll only take him 1260 years to 
finish his acquisition (dependent on 63 more US copyright extension acts 
of course).  It'll also take 920 thousand beers, though Germans might 
demand a better rate than 54ml per line of code (2 * 12 US fluid oz / 13 
lines).

In all seriousness, this is all pretty obvious given SCO's past actions 
to inflate their stock.  Jeff wants us to remove the code in a "good 
faith effort", and then SCO would simply turn around and say "See, the 
Linux people are acting guilty by removing all that code!  We need past 
damages now!".  Anything you do, or do not do, is spun by them as an 
admission.  Even the press has tired of this by now, thankfully.  Jeff 
it seems, has not.

Now if only we could get him to leave us alone for 1260 years...

 - Jim

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Denis Vlasenko]

On Saturday 23 October 2004 02:27, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Since I am an expert in IP misappropriation (having wormed and squirmed 
> my way through it for years) I think I could cut
> through at lot of SCO's FUD (And you guys FUD as well). I could very 
> easily get rid of most of thier claims provide
> you guys will take out of the kernel:
> 
> XFS, JFS, NUMA for certain. You can maintain them as patches for the 
> time being and let the vendors
> who put them in deal with SCO on what belongs to whom.

No. First SCO must prove in court that these are SCO property and were
"stolen", and then maintainers may consider something like removing
or rewriting code.

Not a day earlier.
--
vda

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Fri, 2004-10-22 at 23:27, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> brian wheeler wrote:
> 
> >I'd like to see the list (as well as knowing which kernel version the
> >list comes from) as would many others, I suspect.

Yes, I'm also waiting for it since day 1 of the 

> I'll post the entire listing with line numbers of the files SCO 
> [alleges] were taken from UNIX by IBM and others. 

You didn't understand.
An absolutely necessary information regarding kernel source is the
kernel version number, the tree (-mm, -ac, ...) and/or source URL where
the information (be it a bug report, a kernel oops or false accusations)
is related to.
Simply stating "the linux kernel" has no relevant meaning in any of
these cases.

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

[ again Cc: trimmed ]

On Fri, 2004-10-22 at 21:37, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> 
> SCO Just sent over a list of contaminated files with a "bill of health" 

So please put all that stuff (which surely includes verifiable proofs of
the claims) on some web page so that everyone can check on his own if
the claims are not as completely false as all the previous ones.

[...]
> If you guys want the specific line numbers and filenames, I will ask 
> them to post the specific filenames/line numbers they claim

Especially the reasoning behind the claim is interesting - without such
reasoning there is absolutely no reason to believe a word.

> are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we 
> comply with their Linux Certification Program.

So why do you want to do it in the first place?

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 23 October 2004 00:42, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>>I need you to commit to this in writing, signed and sealed though.
>> Any chance of doing this as per previous allusion?
>>
>>
>>
>>Jon.
>
>I forward this email to Jon Masters digital signature, secret spy,
>magic, digital signing email address:
>
>The following offer was formerly made to Jeff V. Merkey and the
> entire Linux Community by Darl McBride of the SCO Group
>On October 22, 2004, at around 14:00 p.m. MST. I was in a room with
>Blake Stowell, Director of Public Relations, and
>Darl McBride, CEO of the SCO Group, and Mr. McBride stated the
> following offer. Prior to the offer I reviewed the
>Evidence SCO had in their possession to present regarding their
> claims that IBM Corporation took their intellectual
>property and in violation of contracts used it for linux
> development. Their agreements and source code appear to chart
>and track a detailed evolution of Unix technologies into Linux.
> Their presentation is extremely thorough, valid,
>and credible from a technical viewpoint. I make formal affidavit
> under penalty of perjury as to the statements made.
>Darl McBride said:
>
>" .... The SCO has identified Intellectual Property in the Linux
> Kernel that we believe infringes on our intellectual property
>rights. We believe the Linux code which comprises source files of
> the following subsystems listed in the foregoing
>document (which I, Jeff V. Merkey have posted at
>ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/sco_stuff, and which
>document was taped to Blake Stowell's wall directly above his
> telephone -- I will put the document up when I can get
>to a scanner this weekend -- try Saturday afternoon). We have a
> detailed listing of the files
>in Linux and the specific line numbers in these files which comprise
>source code and intellectual property that infringes
>our intellectual property rights based on contracts we hold with IBM
> and others. We can provide this listing to any
>interested parties who wish for us to identify the infringing code
> so that they may remove this code from Linux for
>commerical use. We are not trying to stop people from using Linux,
>however, we would request that our intellectual
>property be removed from the Linux kernel and we will offer
>certification to any Linux user, developer, maintainer,
>contributor, that their code and the Linux code is free from claim
> from SCO. Any Linux kernel which does not use
>the attached subsystems or distribute the code is considered
>non-infringing. Any code written by any IBM employee
>may potentially contain SCO's intellectual property and should be
>removed, including device drivers. SCO will certify
>the use of and hosting of any Linux system or source code and
> release all claims if the following subsystems are removed
>from the distribution:
>
>RCU
>46 files
>109,688 lines
>
>NUMA
>101 files
>56,587 lines
>
>JFS
>44 files
>32,224
>
>XFS
>173 files
>119,130 lines
>
>SMP
>1,185 files
>829,393 lines
>
>Total
>1,549 files
>1,147,022 lines
>
>
>Darl McBride then instructed Mr. Blake Stowell, Director of public
>relation to give me his personal card and further stated
>that this offer was made to Jeff V. Merkey, the Linux Community, and
> any companies I was affiliated with if the terms
>of this offer were complied with. Blake Stowell's contact
> information:
>
>bstowell@sco.com
>355 South 520 West Suite 100
>Lindon, Utah 84042
>801-932-5703 phone
>801-852-9088 fax
>801-369-5595 cell
>
>
>Sworn before The Linux Commnity as the Truth under penalty of perjuy
>October 22, 2004 10:41 p.m. MST
>
>Jeffrey Vernon Merkey

And its all nothing but an artistic arrangement in the glowng of the 
phosphers of my screen, painted there by the electrons from the 
cathode in MY crt.  I don't see a notary seal, or the handwritten 
signature of all parties including the notary public.  So why waste 
everyones time with this charade?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.28% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Fri, 2004-10-22 at 16:58 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Yes. I can do even better.
> I met with Darl McBride this afternoon regarding the GrokSmear postings 
> (First time I've ever met him) at SCO's request

Jeff, 

the world is watching breathlessly your selfless and devotional efforts
to rescue Linux.

I'm answering late because I was requested to meet a couple of people to
report about your invaluable efforts for freedom, justice and the world.

The Pope told me tonight in a private conversation, that he's
considering to beatify you as soon as possible.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee called for an unscheduled emergency
meeting to replace the already choosen candidate by you and Darl.

The International Law Association want's you to be their honorary member
along with a PhD honoris causae to honour your unmatched ability to
analyse a number of complex lawsuits during a coffee talk at SCO.

Finally I met Santa Claus and he asked me, if it's really a good idea to
bring you more of the Peyote stuff as you asked for on your wish list.

I'm awestruck.

Yours sincerely,

tglx, member of the IPTTA (International Psychodelic Tale Teller
Association)

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

jmerkey@galt.devicelogics.com wrote:

>On Sat, Oct 23, 2004 at 04:32:54PM +1000, Nick Piggin wrote:
>  
>
>>Jeff mate, I think you've missed the SCO boat by about 12 months!
>>
>>Nick
>>
>>PS. I love all the stories about your peyote trips. Can you start
>>another mailing list and post them all there instead of here so I
>>don't miss any installments, please? :)
>>    
>>
>
>Yeah.  The new list will be at www.gadugi.org (means working together
>in Cherokee) at the Cherokee Nation tribal complex in Tahlequah
>Oklahoma.  Don't worry, I'll post bugs I find and interesting
>patches from time to time.  The stuff I write that's worth lots 
>of $$$ however, I will put here.  There's some new open source 
>development starting there in about a month.
>
>Come join us.  We are sovereign in the US and SCO, Novell, IBM 
>and anyone else's legal crap goes nowhere.  You have to go to 
>the Congress of the United States and find a treaty to litigate 
>or get them to pass an act before someone can even sue us.  
>if SCO want to sue us for IP infringement in the US, good luck,
>and our agreements with other companies like IBM and others
>canot be attacked in court -- they have sovereign immunity.
>
>Want to move development there and use our license....
>
>Think about it.  Someone needs to thrw Darl McBride a bone,
>he's getting that hungry look in his eyes again .....  Nick
>you are invited to Cherokee Nation to hang out and so are all
>your Linux friends.
>
>:-)
>
>Jeff
>
>
>
>  
>

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Nick Piggin]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> Sworn before The Linux Commnity as the Truth under penalty of perjuy 
> October 22, 2004 10:41 p.m. MST
> 
> Jeffrey Vernon Merkey
> 

Jeff mate, I think you've missed the SCO boat by about 12 months!

Nick

PS. I love all the stories about your peyote trips. Can you start
another mailing list and post them all there instead of here so I
don't miss any installments, please? :)

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

>I need you to commit to this in writing, signed and sealed though. Any
>chance of doing this as per previous allusion?
>
>  
>
>Jon.
>  
>
I forward this email to Jon Masters digital signature, secret spy, 
magic, digital signing email address:

The following offer was formerly made to Jeff V. Merkey and the entire 
Linux Community by Darl McBride of the SCO Group
On October 22, 2004, at around 14:00 p.m. MST. I was in a room with 
Blake Stowell, Director of Public Relations, and
Darl McBride, CEO of the SCO Group, and Mr. McBride stated the following 
offer. Prior to the offer I reviewed the
Evidence SCO had in their possession to present regarding their claims 
that IBM Corporation took their intellectual
property and in violation of contracts used it for linux development. 
Their agreements and source code appear to chart
and track a detailed evolution of Unix technologies into Linux. Their 
presentation is extremely thorough, valid,
and credible from a technical viewpoint. I make formal affidavit under 
penalty of perjury as to the statements made.
Darl McBride said:

" .... The SCO has identified Intellectual Property in the Linux Kernel 
that we believe infringes on our intellectual property
rights. We believe the Linux code which comprises source files of the 
following subsystems listed in the foregoing
document (which I, Jeff V. Merkey have posted at 
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/sco_stuff, and which
document was taped to Blake Stowell's wall directly above his telephone 
-- I will put the document up when I can get
to a scanner this weekend -- try Saturday afternoon). We have a detailed 
listing of the files
in Linux and the specific line numbers in these files which comprise 
source code and intellectual property that infringes
our intellectual property rights based on contracts we hold with IBM and 
others. We can provide this listing to any
interested parties who wish for us to identify the infringing code so 
that they may remove this code from Linux for
commerical use. We are not trying to stop people from using Linux, 
however, we would request that our intellectual
property be removed from the Linux kernel and we will offer 
certification to any Linux user, developer, maintainer,
contributor, that their code and the Linux code is free from claim from 
SCO. Any Linux kernel which does not use
the attached subsystems or distribute the code is considered 
non-infringing. Any code written by any IBM employee
may potentially contain SCO's intellectual property and should be 
removed, including device drivers. SCO will certify
the use of and hosting of any Linux system or source code and release 
all claims if the following subsystems are removed
from the distribution:

RCU
46 files
109,688 lines

NUMA
101 files
56,587 lines

JFS
44 files
32,224

XFS
173 files
119,130 lines

SMP
1,185 files
829,393 lines

Total
1,549 files
1,147,022 lines


Darl McBride then instructed Mr. Blake Stowell, Director of public 
relation to give me his personal card and further stated
that this offer was made to Jeff V. Merkey, the Linux Community, and any 
companies I was affiliated with if the terms
of this offer were complied with. Blake Stowell's contact information:

bstowell@sco.com
355 South 520 West Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
801-932-5703 phone
801-852-9088 fax
801-369-5595 cell


Sworn before The Linux Commnity as the Truth under penalty of perjuy 
October 22, 2004 10:41 p.m. MST

Jeffrey Vernon Merkey

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Diego Calleja]

El Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:02:48 -0600 "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@drdos.com>
 escribió:

> Agreed. I will do so. I think SCO just wants their stuff our of Linux. 
> We should accomodate them.
> Who wants to use this stuff besides IBM anyway.

This is a problem between IBM and SCO, not between the kernel community
and SCO. So let the justice decide if SCO is right or not, and if SCO
claims are valid IBM probably will take the code out, or fix the problems
in some way.

SCO has failed to provide evidences of their claims (no, people don't believe
you) so there's not point in removing a single line of code until that
happens. A "list of files Darl says you should remove" will be ignored
because that's not a proof. I could claim I own all the code under lib/,
but obviously nobody would listen me if I don't prove something, which is
the main problem SCO seem to have...from the numbers I read from the news 
SCO claims don't seem to be harming the linux market either, so who cares?

Redhat/Novell are free to remove/modify whatever code they want, just in
the same way redhat don't enables NTFS support or provide mp3 players by
default.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Lee Revell]

On Fri, 2004-10-22 at 18:07 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> 
> >Merkey is a troll.  QED.
> >
> >Lee
> >
> >  
> >
> 
> Not! 
> 

In your last message you say "who wants to use this stuff except IBM
anyway", where "this stuff" includes SMP.  That statement is both absurd
and inflammatory.  Therefore you are a troll.

If I have to explain why you are also stupider than I thought.

Anyway, thanks for your posts - now I know how to use the kill file in
Evolution 2.0.

Lee

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jon Masters]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 17:46:54 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:

> Jon Masters wrote:

> > Do you model your testing process on SCO
> > directly? i.e. can I have you go on record that your testing process
> > is satisfied after two days of testing?

> No. It's still running with the following metrics, it's been up all
> week, and it doesn't crash in 20 minutes, which it always did
> before, and my BIO multiple page requests don't corrupt
> memory anymore:

Ok great, that sounds good.

What happens when you try resetting those metrics with dd if=/dev/zero
of=/dev/mem?

> >>SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise detail and factual
> >>documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was
> >>taken from Unix. We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough
> >>uncertianty to warrant removal of the infringing portions.

> >Will you offer that as an undertaking, properly signed and sealed,
> >though? If these unfortunate sections of code are removed, will you
> >guarantee SCO won't sue?

> I have convinced Darl to post a program that will state exactly this.

I need you to commit to this in writing, signed and sealed though. Any
chance of doing this as per previous allusion?

> As far as RCU goes, there's so many three letter acronyms, RCU could
> stand for anything.

Yes it could indeed. However in the context of the Linux kernel it
tends to usually refer to the Read Copy Update technique as an
alternative to explicit locks.

Jon.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jon Masters]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 17:24:36 -0700, David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:

>         One other issue with trying to work with SCO just to prevent future
> problems -- SCO has already offered bogus immunities from liability. So I
> wouldn't trust any immunity you even think you have. Especially since we
> don't know what it is we're supposed to be immune *from*. (Is it copyright?
> Is it trade secret? Is it fruit of some kind of poisonous tree because IBM
> violated the spirit of some contract none of us are a party to?)

It is not obvious what my motivation for asking for his
indemnification actually was though?

Jon.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Lee Revell]

On Sat, 2004-10-23 at 01:14 +0100, Jon Masters wrote:
> > We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our
> > products that SCO claims was stolen from Unix.
> 
> > and RCU.
> 
> But elsewhere you said:
> 
> > I have no idea what the hell RCU is

Merkey is a troll.  QED.

Please stop feeding him!

Lee

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jon Masters]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:58:54 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:
> Jon Masters wrote:
> 
> >Jeff,
> >
> >Could you please digitally sign this mail that you are planning to
> >send or otherwise provide notorisation that confirms you definately
> >mean this?
> >
> >I'd love for you to accept liability for this so we can pass all SCO
> >enquiries on to you.
> >
> >Jon.

> Yes. I can do even better.

Ok. But I need you to sign this using some recognised signature -
other folks can suggest mechanisms we can use that are legally valid.
I'm happy to act as a gobetween if we could get you to undertake to
accept liability for any infringing code left in the kernel after any
proven SCO demands were to be met (I'm sure other folks can see where
I'm going with this discussion - let's see what the response is).

> I met with Darl McBride this afternoon

Did you have tea and crumpets? Jam?

> He gave me the first list, and I am waiting on the second

Like I said, if you could provide this to me with legally valid,
documented proof that you'll accept liability for further infringement
then that would help greatly with this thread.

> I don't think he likes Linux much

That surprises me. I thought Darl loved Linux more than life itself -
thanks for the correction.

> I will have it probably Monday. I'll post it then.

If you mail it to me at: jcm@jonmasters.org along with some contact
details then I can arrange to have you mail me a signed declaration
accepting liability.

> Darl seemed like a nice enough sort

I'd love to interview the guy, if he were interested.

> but he doesn't care much for Linux or IBM and he's pretty harsh on IBM.

IBM must be devastated. Seriously. I mean, they're what, the world's
fourth largest bank or something along those lines? Isn't that enough
money to buyout SCO a bazillion times over and still have some pocket
change left over?

> We argued for 30 minutes about SMP support in Linux and I think
> he will just let this one go since I pointed out that Novell had
> disclosed the Unixware SMP stuff at Brainshare and he
> cannot claim it as trade secrete any longer.

That's interesting. Can you commit to that too in your declaration please?

> He would not budge on RCU, NUMA, JFS, or XFS however, and he also said any IBM
> employee who contributed SMP code in his opinion may have misappropriated it

Did he check the dodo_lock_t stuff too?

> and he would claim any contribution from any IBM employee in Linux.

Were there any restrictions upon when that person was an employee?

> I will post to kernel.org the complete listing.

Thanks. I look forward to reading that.

Jon.

RE: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[David Schwartz]

> Darl seemed like a nice enough sort, but he doesn't care much for Linux
> or IBM and he's pretty harsh
> on IBM. We argued for 30 minutes about SMP support in Linux and I think
> he will just let this one go since
> I pointed out that Novell had disclosed the Unixware SMP stuff at
> Brainshare and he cannot claim
> it as trade secrete any longer. He would not budge on RCU, NUMA, JFS, or
> XFS however, and he
> also said any IBM employee who contributed SMP code in his opinion may
> have misappropriated it
> and he would claim any contribution from any IBM employee in Linux.

	IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you can't go after innocent third parties for
trade secrets or misappropriated intellectual property. That's what we have
copyright and patent for. He can certainly go after the people who actually
stole the trade secrets or misappropriated the intellectual property, but
only copyright and patent provide the public notification requirements that
permit one to sustain claims against innocent third parties (those who use
the stolen/misappropriated property without any knowledge that it was stolen
or misappropriated).

	If he's trying to claim that any use subsequent to some point at which we
are supposed to have known that it was stolen or misappropriated, a listing
by category is not anywhere near sufficient, IMO. Even files and line ranges
don't suffice. He would have to provide us with sufficient information to
*verify* the *credibility* of his claim. This has never been done. The
biggest missing piece is *what* it is that has been stolen.

	If it's conceptual ideas, like the idea of SMP but not the code, then he's
just totally out of his mind. Only patent provides that type of broad
protection. If it's a 'derived work' type argument (that we stole something
from him and changed it, so it's not literally the same but still his
property), then he's again totally out of his mind. Only copyright provides
that type of protection.

	In any event, it's self-defeating, IMO, to act on SCO's claims at this
point. Until they're well enough defined that it's possible for us to
investigate them, we are still innocent third party victims of someone
else's misappropriation. And that's not our problem. Again, IANAL.

	One other issue with trying to work with SCO just to prevent future
problems -- SCO has already offered bogus immunities from liability. So I
wouldn't trust any immunity you even think you have. Especially since we
don't know what it is we're supposed to be immune *from*. (Is it copyright?
Is it trade secret? Is it fruit of some kind of poisonous tree because IBM
violated the spirit of some contract none of us are a party to?)

	DS

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jon Masters]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:38:03 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:

> The memory sickness with disappearing buffers, and the BIO callback
> problems with the SCSI layer previously reported appear to be corrected.

Do you even know anything about the above?

> This release is very solid and withstands 400 MB/S I/O to disk from
> 3GB/1GB split kernel/user memory configurations

Oh good.

> stable enough for us to use and ship in our products based on our
> testing of the 2.6.9 release over two days.

Wow! That's quality there. Do you model your testing process on SCO
directly? i.e. can I have you go on record that your testing process
is satisfied after two days of testing?

> On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We
> will be contacting individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder

Please do keep me aprised of this Jeff. I am quite certain that my
readers will find your anecdotes more than amusing.

> SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise detail and factual
> documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was
> taken from Unix. We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough
> uncertianty to warrant removal of the infringing portions.

Will you offer that as an undertaking, properly signed and sealed,
though? If these unfortunate sections of code are removed, will you
guarantee SCO won't sue?

> We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our
> products that SCO claims was stolen from Unix.

> and RCU.

But elsewhere you said:

> I have no idea what the hell RCU is

Since this came up in this week's LWN kernel page (you really should
read LWN, it's filled with fascinating content and even features a
special discussion relating to your posting), one simply must ask -
how did you remove code that you do not understand? I really
absolutely want to know how this is possible, because if you have
found a technique for doing this then we can farm off all the really
complex cleanups to MCSE qualified technicians to do instead. This
would save core kernel developers unnecessary hassle and free up their
time to consider your offer in further levels of detail.

> They make claims of other portions of Linux which were taken, however,
> these other claims do not appear to be supported with factual evidence.

Can you guarantee that?

Jon.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Lee Revell wrote:

>Merkey is a troll.  QED.
>
>Lee
>
>  
>

Not! 

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Jon Masters wrote:

>On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:58:54 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Jon Masters wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Jeff,
>>>
>>>Could you please digitally sign this mail that you are planning to
>>>send or otherwise provide notorisation that confirms you definately
>>>mean this?
>>>
>>>I'd love for you to accept liability for this so we can pass all SCO
>>>enquiries on to you.
>>>
>>>Jon.
>>>      
>>>
>
>  
>
>>Yes. I can do even better.
>>    
>>
>
>Ok. But I need you to sign this using some recognised signature -
>other folks can suggest mechanisms we can use that are legally valid.
>I'm happy to act as a gobetween if we could get you to undertake to
>accept liability for any infringing code left in the kernel after any
>proven SCO demands were to be met (I'm sure other folks can see where
>I'm going with this discussion - let's see what the response is).
>  
>

I would agree to this. I will meet with SCO Monday and see if they will 
accept this as a proposal. I think
they probably will.

>  
>
>>I met with Darl McBride this afternoon
>>    
>>
>
>Did you have tea and crumpets? Jam?
>
>  
>
They gave me raw carrots (in a plastic bag on Blake's desk) and Baby 
Ruth candy bars. We met in
Blake's office (The PR Guy). They had their corporate counsel sitting in 
another room and I guess he was
listenting in or something, but he never entered the room. We talked 
about the Novell/Bill Mason/Pamela Jones/Groklaw
connections (all of these people are ex Novell employees). I was met at 
the front door door by Joan (Darl's
admin) and Blake, then Darl came into the Blakes office. They typed a 
letter first roasting GrokLaw then the
SCO general counsel said not to sign it even though Darl wanted him to, 
and they said to have Blake put out
some sort of release instead. Then Darl and I talked about all the Linux 
code for about an hour or so.


>>He gave me the first list, and I am waiting on the second
>>    
>>
>
>Like I said, if you could provide this to me with legally valid,
>documented proof that you'll accept liability for further infringement
>then that would help greatly with this thread.
>
>  
>

Yes. I am waiting for them to send it. I called Joan and Darl after I 
sent this and Darl had left for the day
and Joan called him on his cell phone and I am supposed to talk to Blake 
on Monday.

>>I don't think he likes Linux much
>>    
>>
>
>That surprises me. I thought Darl loved Linux more than life itself -
>thanks for the correction.
>
>  
>
>>I will have it probably Monday. I'll post it then.
>>    
>>
>
>If you mail it to me at: jcm@jonmasters.org along with some contact
>details then I can arrange to have you mail me a signed declaration
>accepting liability.
>
>  
>

Agreed. I will do so. I think SCO just wants their stuff our of Linux. 
We should accomodate them.
Who wants to use this stuff besides IBM anyway.

>>Darl seemed like a nice enough sort
>>    
>>
>
>I'd love to interview the guy, if he were interested.
>
>  
>

I could ask him...

>>We argued for 30 minutes about SMP support in Linux and I think
>>he will just let this one go since I pointed out that Novell had
>>disclosed the Unixware SMP stuff at Brainshare and he
>>cannot claim it as trade secrete any longer.
>>    
>>
>
>That's interesting. Can you commit to that too in your declaration please?
>  
>
Yes.

>>and he would claim any contribution from any IBM employee in Linux.
>>    
>>
>
>Were there any restrictions upon when that person was an employee?
>  
>

Yes. He said any employee who had access to their source code and who 
fell under the license agreements. It was
somewhat nebulous, and form the way he explained it, the agreements with 
IBM pretty much covered all employees
everywhere. There was some sort of non-compete clause so I think this 
affects everyone.

>  
>
>>I will post to kernel.org the complete listing.
>>    
>>
>
>Thanks. I look forward to reading that.
>  
>

You got it.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Jon Masters wrote:

>On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:38:03 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>The memory sickness with disappearing buffers, and the BIO callback
>>problems with the SCSI layer previously reported appear to be corrected.
>>    
>>
>
>Do you even know anything about the above?
>  
>

Yeah. I reported both in two threads.

>  
>
>>This release is very solid and withstands 400 MB/S I/O to disk from
>>3GB/1GB split kernel/user memory configurations
>>    
>>
>
>Oh good.
>
>  
>
>>stable enough for us to use and ship in our products based on our
>>testing of the 2.6.9 release over two days.
>>    
>>
>
>Wow! That's quality there. Do you model your testing process on SCO
>directly? i.e. can I have you go on record that your testing process
>is satisfied after two days of testing?
>
>  
>

No. It's still running with the following metrics, it's been up all 
week, and it doesn't
crash in 20 minutes, which it always did before, and my BIO multiple 
page requests
don't corrupt memory anymore:

MemTotal:      2983468 kB
MemFree:        140692 kB
Buffers:        218568 kB
Cached:         128308 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:         169904 kB
Inactive:       191432 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:      2983468 kB
LowFree:        140692 kB
SwapTotal:     1052248 kB
SwapFree:      1052248 kB
Dirty:             132 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
Mapped:          18608 kB
Slab:          2472572 kB
Committed_AS:    95480 kB
PageTables:       1060 kB
VmallocTotal:   122804 kB
VmallocUsed:      3248 kB
VmallocChunk:   119088 kB


slabinfo - version: 2.0
# name <active_objs> <num_objs> <objsize> <objperslab> <pagesperslab> : 
tunables <batchcount> <limit> <sharedfactor> : slabdata <active_slabs> 
<num_slabs> <sharedavail>
bt_sock 3 10 384 10 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
ip_fib_alias 11 226 16 226 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
ip_fib_hash 11 119 32 119 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
scsi_cmd_cache 160 160 384 10 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 16 16 0
sgpool-128 32 32 2048 2 1 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 16 16 0
sgpool-64 32 32 1024 4 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 8 8 0
sgpool-32 79 136 512 8 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 11 17 0
sgpool-16 45 45 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 3 3 0
sgpool-8 217 217 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 7 7 0
dm_tio 0 0 16 226 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
dm_io 0 0 16 226 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
uhci_urb_priv 0 0 44 88 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
dn_fib_info_cache 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
dn_dst_cache 0 0 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
dn_neigh_cache 0 0 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
decnet_socket_cache 0 0 768 5 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
clip_arp_cache 0 0 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
xfrm6_tunnel_spi 0 0 64 61 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
fib6_nodes 13 119 32 119 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
ip6_dst_cache 51 90 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 6 6 0
ndisc_cache 9 30 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 2 2 0
rawv6_sock 3 6 640 6 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
udpv6_sock 0 0 640 6 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
tcpv6_sock 2 7 1152 7 2 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
unix_sock 40 40 384 10 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 4 4 0
ip_mrt_cache 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
tcp_tw_bucket 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
tcp_bind_bucket 1 226 16 226 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
tcp_open_request 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
inet_peer_cache 0 0 64 61 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
secpath_cache 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
xfrm_dst_cache 0 0 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
ip_dst_cache 7 15 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
arp_cache 1 31 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
raw_sock 2 7 512 7 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
udp_sock 4 7 512 7 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
tcp_sock 0 0 1024 4 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
flow_cache 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
isofs_inode_cache 0 0 320 12 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
fat_inode_cache 0 0 340 11 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
ext2_inode_cache 0 0 400 10 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
journal_handle 37 135 28 135 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
journal_head 92 243 48 81 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 3 3 0
revoke_table 4 290 12 290 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
revoke_record 0 0 16 226 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
ext3_inode_cache 389931 397737 440 9 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 
44193 44193 0
ext3_xattr 0 0 44 88 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
reiser_inode_cache 0 0 368 11 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
dquot 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
eventpoll_pwq 0 0 36 107 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
eventpoll_epi 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
kioctx 0 0 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
kiocb 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
dnotify_cache 0 0 20 185 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
fasync_cache 0 0 16 226 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
shmem_inode_cache 4 10 384 10 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
posix_timers_cache 0 0 96 41 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
uid_cache 1 61 64 61 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
cfq_pool 64 119 32 119 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
crq_pool 0 0 36 107 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
deadline_drq 0 0 48 81 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
as_arq 205 390 60 65 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 6 6 0
blkdev_ioc 42 185 20 185 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
blkdev_queue 21 24 456 8 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 3 3 0
blkdev_requests 218 234 152 26 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 9 9 0
biovec-(256) 256 256 3072 2 2 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 128 128 0
biovec-128 256 260 1536 5 2 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 52 52 0
biovec-64 256 260 768 5 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 52 52 0
biovec-16 131331 131340 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 8756 8756 0
biovec-4 256 305 64 61 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 5 5 0
biovec-1 319 452 16 226 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 2 2 0
bio 131370 131394 64 61 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 2154 2154 0
file_lock_cache 45 45 88 45 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
sock_inode_cache 70 70 384 10 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 7 7 0
skbuff_head_cache 2076 2115 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 141 
141 0
sock 22 30 384 10 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 3 3 0
proc_inode_cache 320 416 308 13 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 32 32 0
sigqueue 27 27 148 27 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
radix_tree_node 14371 20552 276 14 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 1468 
1468 0
bdev_cache 9 14 512 7 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 2 2 0
mnt_cache 21 31 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
inode_cache 3465 3484 292 13 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 268 268 0
dentry_cache 325624 352016 140 28 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 12572 
12572 0
filp 651 735 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 49 49 0
names_cache 4 4 4096 1 1 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 4 4 0
idr_layer_cache 101 116 136 29 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 4 4 0
buffer_head 56316 60750 48 81 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 750 750 0
mm_struct 73 84 640 6 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 14 14 0
vm_area_struct 1508 1645 84 47 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 35 35 0
fs_cache 119 119 32 119 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
files_cache 77 77 512 7 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 11 11 0
signal_cache 124 124 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 4 4 0
sighand_cache 105 105 1408 5 2 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 21 21 0
task_struct 105 105 1376 5 2 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 21 21 0
anon_vma 754 1221 8 407 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 3 3 0
pgd 73 73 4096 1 1 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 73 73 0
size-131072(DMA) 0 0 131072 1 32 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-131072 1 1 131072 1 32 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 1 1 0
size-65536(DMA) 0 0 65536 1 16 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-65536 32950 32950 65536 1 16 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 32950 32950 0
size-32768(DMA) 0 0 32768 1 8 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-32768 7 7 32768 1 8 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 7 7 0
size-16384(DMA) 0 0 16384 1 4 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-16384 35 35 16384 1 4 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 35 35 0
size-8192(DMA) 0 0 8192 1 2 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-8192 107 107 8192 1 2 : tunables 8 4 0 : slabdata 107 107 0
size-4096(DMA) 0 0 4096 1 1 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-4096 2101 2101 4096 1 1 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 2101 2101 0
size-2048(DMA) 0 0 2048 2 1 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-2048 32964 32964 2048 2 1 : tunables 24 12 0 : slabdata 16482 16482 0
size-1024(DMA) 0 0 1024 4 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-1024 195 200 1024 4 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 50 50 0
size-512(DMA) 0 0 512 8 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-512 186 560 512 8 1 : tunables 54 27 0 : slabdata 70 70 0
size-256(DMA) 0 0 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-256 263 465 256 15 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 31 31 0
size-128(DMA) 0 0 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-128 2267 2294 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 74 74 0
size-64(DMA) 0 0 64 61 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-64 4152 4453 64 61 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 73 73 0
size-32(DMA) 0 0 32 119 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 0 0 0
size-32 53338 53431 32 119 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 449 449 0
kmem_cache 124 124 128 31 1 : tunables 120 60 0 : slabdata 4 4 0


>>SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise detail and factual
>>documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was
>>taken from Unix. We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough
>>uncertianty to warrant removal of the infringing portions.
>>    
>>
>
>Will you offer that as an undertaking, properly signed and sealed,
>though? If these unfortunate sections of code are removed, will you
>guarantee SCO won't sue?
>  
>

I have convinced Darl to post a program that will state exactly this. 
When we have completed our
Linux code removal he will allow anyone to do the same and he told us he 
would agree not to sue
and state this to whomever would remove the code and complete this 
process. Seems reasonable.

>
>Jon.
>
>  
>
As far as RCU goes, there's so many three letter acronyms, RCU could 
stand for anything. How
about Read Copy Update for locking primitives.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> Jon Masters wrote:
>
>> I'd love for you to accept liability for this so we can pass all SCO
>> enquiries on to you.
>>
>> Jon.
>>
>
Jon and LKML,

Also, I will contact Allan Sullivan who represents IBM in the litigation 
and let them know I would be happy to
handle this an an advocate of the Linux Community. Alan Sullivan worked 
for me on the TRG/Novell lawsuit
and I know him. I will be more than happy to challenge any claims Linux 
folks think are bogus from SCO.

Since I am an expert in IP misappropriation (having wormed and squirmed 
my way through it for years) I think I could cut
through at lot of SCO's FUD (And you guys FUD as well). I could very 
easily get rid of most of thier claims provide
you guys will take out of the kernel:

XFS, JFS, NUMA for certain. You can maintain them as patches for the 
time being and let the vendors
who put them in deal with SCO on what belongs to whom.

I think their SMP claims are very weak at present. Novell has stated 
publically you can use their patents. I also
consent to Linux using any patents in my name for SMP in Linux IAW 
Novell's offer. Any IBM contributed
code should probably be removed and reimplemented by someone else, then 
SCO has no claims on it.

I have no idea what you should do about RCU. On this one, wait for the 
posting from SCO, then remove the code
and reimplement it cleanroom. The loss of XFS, JFS, and NUMA is not 
critical, and people can always get patches.
If you guys do this, then SCO won't be able to interfere with Redhat or 
any Linux companies except the ones they
are suing. Darl showed me the undisclosed IP agreements between Novell 
and SCO that are not public, and Novell
**IS** going to lose their Copyright case -- the agreements say they 
sold them to SCO -- period, and for some
reason Novell failed to make copies of the documents which is why they 
don't have them.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Tonnerre]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 444 bytes --]

Salut,

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 10:30:40PM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> Hey, why do you rip out all the code ? 
> 
> http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v1.0/linux-1.0.tar.bz2
> 
> contains none of it.

ftp://zeus.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/linux-0.01.tar.gz

which is a  clean... err.. dark and messy  room implementation, and is
essentially free of code that might have been contributed by others.

			    Tonnerre

[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jon Masters]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 15:27:37 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:

> I'll post the entire listing with line numbers of the files SCO
> [alleges] were taken from UNIX by IBM and others.

Jeff,

Could you please digitally sign this mail that you are planning to
send or otherwise provide notorisation that confirms you definately
mean this?

I'd love for you to accept liability for this so we can pass all SCO
enquiries on to you.

Jon.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Jon Masters wrote:

>Jeff,
>
>Could you please digitally sign this mail that you are planning to
>send or otherwise provide notorisation that confirms you definately
>mean this?
>
>I'd love for you to accept liability for this so we can pass all SCO
>enquiries on to you.
>
>Jon.
>
>  
>
Yes. I can do even better.

I met with Darl McBride this afternoon regarding the GrokSmear postings 
(First time I've ever met him) at SCO's
request -- they invited me over and were trying to put out some sort of 
release to correct GrokSmear's attacks.
He gave me the first list, and I am waiting on the second with all the 
details. I don't think he likes Linux much but he said he
supported disclosing the whole thing and he said he wanted "his stuff" 
out of the Linux tree. I am waiting on Chris Sonntag
and Blake to get me the "approved" listing. I will have it probably 
Monday. I'll post it then. Darl gave me the prelimiary
listing but we need to post the final. I'll upload the listing to 
ftp.kernel.org://pub/linux/kernel/people/jmerkey
and everyone can look it over. This would be good since it will give 
folks the ability to
challenge/correct/remove/modify whatever and get SCO off Linux's back.

Darl seemed like a nice enough sort, but he doesn't care much for Linux 
or IBM and he's pretty harsh
on IBM. We argued for 30 minutes about SMP support in Linux and I think 
he will just let this one go since
I pointed out that Novell had disclosed the Unixware SMP stuff at 
Brainshare and he cannot claim
it as trade secrete any longer. He would not budge on RCU, NUMA, JFS, or 
XFS however, and he
also said any IBM employee who contributed SMP code in his opinion may 
have misappropriated it
and he would claim any contribution from any IBM employee in Linux.

I will post to kernel.org the complete listing.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[brian wheeler]

I'd like to see the list (as well as knowing which kernel version the
list comes from) as would many others, I suspect.

Brian Wheeler
bdwheele@indiana.edu


---------------------
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

SCO Just sent over a list of contaminated files with a "bill of health" 
certification for Linux that if we remove the identified files
they will certify our Linux distribution as clean. They are also sending 
out some form of statement that we are
not affiliated with them, and that we are competitors of SCO since we 
use Linux. They claim the following and I have
a listing of files, lines numbers, etc. they told us we must remove in 
order for our Linux appliances to be considered
"clean." This info might be useful to others. They have a cert program 
to remove the areas.

Here it is. I can get the line numbers of the file and their names if 
anyone needs it, but the list is very big.

RCU
46 files
109,688 lines

NUMA
101 files
56,587 lines

JFS
44 files
32,224 lines

XFS
173 Files
119,130 lines

SMP
1,185 files
829,393 lines

Total files/lines they [allege] contains SCO source code
1,549 files
1,147,022 lines

If you guys want the specific line numbers and filenames, I will ask 
them to post the specific filenames/line numbers they claim
are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we 
comply with their Linux Certification Program.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

brian wheeler wrote:

>I'd like to see the list (as well as knowing which kernel version the
>list comes from) as would many others, I suspect.
>
>Brian Wheeler
>bdwheele@indiana.edu
>
>
>
>  
>
I'll post the entire listing with line numbers of the files SCO 
[alleges] were taken from UNIX by IBM and others. 

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Fri, 2004-10-22 at 13:37 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> ...
> They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we 
> comply with their Linux Certification Program.

Sure, sounds like SCO.

if (comply)
	fear_to_be_sued = true;
else
	fear_to_be_sued = true;

hahahaha

tglx

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> SCO Just sent over a list of contaminated files with a "bill of health" 
> certification for Linux that if we remove the identified files
> they will certify our Linux distribution as clean. They are also sending out 
> some form of statement that we are
> not affiliated with them, and that we are competitors of SCO since we use 
> Linux. They claim the following and I have
> a listing of files, lines numbers, etc. they told us we must remove in order 
> for our Linux appliances to be considered
> "clean." This info might be useful to others. They have a cert program to 
> remove the areas.
>
> Here it is. I can get the line numbers of the file and their names if anyone 
> needs it, but the list is very big.
>
> RCU
> 46 files
> 109,688 lines
>
> NUMA
> 101 files
> 56,587 lines
>
> JFS
> 44 files
> 32,224 lines
>
> XFS
> 173 Files
> 119,130 lines
>
> SMP
> 1,185 files
> 829,393 lines
>
> Total files/lines they [allege] contains SCO source code
> 1,549 files
> 1,147,022 lines
>
> If you guys want the specific line numbers and filenames, I will ask them to 
> post the specific filenames/line numbers they claim
> are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we 
> comply with their Linux Certification Program.
>

You can ship Linux without fear of being sued anyway.


Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.6.9 on an i686 machine (5537.79 GrumpyMips).
                  98.36% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Buddy Lucas]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:37:28 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:
> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

[ snip ]

> are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we
> comply with their Linux Certification Program.

Whoops, better not comply then.


Later,
Buddy

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Grahame White]

> If you guys want the specific line numbers and filenames, I will ask
> them to post the specific filenames/line numbers they claim
> are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we
> comply with their Linux Certification Program.

Looking at the previous actions of SCO I 100% believe that.

Grahame

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

SCO Just sent over a list of contaminated files with a "bill of health" 
certification for Linux that if we remove the identified files
they will certify our Linux distribution as clean. They are also sending 
out some form of statement that we are
not affiliated with them, and that we are competitors of SCO since we 
use Linux. They claim the following and I have
a listing of files, lines numbers, etc. they told us we must remove in 
order for our Linux appliances to be considered
"clean." This info might be useful to others. They have a cert program 
to remove the areas.

Here it is. I can get the line numbers of the file and their names if 
anyone needs it, but the list is very big.

RCU
46 files
109,688 lines

NUMA
101 files
56,587 lines

JFS
44 files
32,224 lines

XFS
173 Files
119,130 lines

SMP
1,185 files
829,393 lines

Total files/lines they [allege] contains SCO source code
1,549 files
1,147,022 lines

If you guys want the specific line numbers and filenames, I will ask 
them to post the specific filenames/line numbers they claim
are theirs. They stated we can ship Linux with fear of being sued if we 
comply with their Linux Certification Program.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Al Viro]

On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 10:15:00AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> This was written by Novell's stooge Judge Schoefield. It's total 
> fiction. Don't worry, it will get cleared up soon.
> 
> More bugs to find ....

Out of curiosity, which bugs are you using?  Never heard of hallucinogenic
insects to be found in Utah...

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Al Viro wrote:

>On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 10:15:00AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>  
>
>>This was written by Novell's stooge Judge Schoefield. It's total 
>>fiction. Don't worry, it will get cleared up soon.
>>
>>More bugs to find ....
>>    
>>
>
>Out of curiosity, which bugs are you using?  Never heard of hallucinogenic
>insects to be found in Utah...
>
>  
>
Al,

This is a high traffic list. I am refering to the bugs in my code and 
occasionally the ones I find in Linux
that for some reason get challenged everytime I post, then get fixed in 
subsequent patches. :-)

So I am sticking to bugs from now on. On the GPL buyout, when stuff gets 
released publically,
it will be clear this was an an attempt to help you guys and shut down 
the SCO/Canopy/Novell
legal ranglings. I just want to develop code and have fun. Time to get 
back to that.

At least the bugs get fixed. There is a hallucinogenic toad (Bufus 
Coloradus) the colorado river toad that lives
about 4 hours drive from here, and it secretes 5-DMT when you lick it's 
back. Some indian showed this to california hippies
and now the toads are endamgered. It's the closest thing to a 
hallucingenic bug I can think of. It's a felony to
possess these toads now in the US (Freeze - drop that toad - your honor, 
upon approaching the vehicle I heard
a strange croaking noise coming from the trunk, upon inspection, I found 
these -- colorado river toads).

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Ingo Molnar wrote:

>first i was slighly puzzled and suspected that your mail server somehow
>delayed your outgoing email for ~1.5 years then i found what i believe
>is the secret message hidden in your email:
>
>* Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>[...] The memory sickness [...]
>>[...] I was experiencing  [...]
>>[...] is constant [...]
>>    
>>
>
>please confirm decoding was correct! Meanwhile our secret message back
>to agent 000 is:
>
>  IN THAT CONDITION MUST NOT POST TO LKML UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!
>
>[this message has been caps-encrypted. COMPARTMENTED 12B3. EYES ONLY.]
>
>	Ingo
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>  
>
Ingo,

Bite me.

:-)

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

David Weinehall wrote:

>On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 02:09:28PM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>[snip]
>
>  
>
>>No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under 
>>Employee
>>agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and they are 
>>very
>>confident of this.  From a cursory viewpoint, it looks valid.  I think 
>>they have a case
>>(having been sued and nailed for the same type of thing by Novell).  
>>    
>>
>
>(Quoting from groklaw wrt that lawsuit:)
>
>"The judge had a few descriptive words for Mr. Merkey, as you will note
> particularly in paragraph 123 - 125 of the Findings of Fact:
>
> 124. In fact, however, Merkey is not just prone to exaggeration, he also
> is and can be deceptive, not only to his adversaries, but also to his
> own partners, his business associates and to the court. He deliberately
> describes his own, separate reality."
>
>[snip]
>
>Meanwhile, life goes on as usual in the real world.
>
>Oh, and if you happen to need any code I might have contributed to the
>kernel, it's available under the GPL.  Only.
>
>
>Regards: David Weinehall
>  
>
This was written by Novell's stooge Judge Schoefield. It's total 
fiction. Don't worry, it will get cleared up soon.

More bugs to find ....

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Erik Andersen wrote:

>On Tue Oct 19, 2004 at 02:27:30PM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>  
>
>>Pekka Pietikainen wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>arch/m68k/sun3/leds.c is available (dual BSD/GPL) for the price of two 
>>>beers (I believe nobody else has touched it so it should be all mine). 
>>>
>>>The other files of the port to that very fine architecture are largely done
>>>by other people, so unfortunately I can't relicense those.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Hurray!  Got one.  You're added to the list.
>>    
>>
>
>Do remember to replace the included inlines with your own code.
>
> -Erik
>
>--
>Erik B. Andersen             http://codepoet-consulting.com/
>--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
>
>  
>
Erik,

Ok. Byran says hi.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[David Weinehall]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 02:09:28PM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
[snip]

> No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under 
> Employee
> agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and they are 
> very
> confident of this.  From a cursory viewpoint, it looks valid.  I think 
> they have a case
> (having been sued and nailed for the same type of thing by Novell).  

(Quoting from groklaw wrt that lawsuit:)

"The judge had a few descriptive words for Mr. Merkey, as you will note
 particularly in paragraph 123 - 125 of the Findings of Fact:

 124. In fact, however, Merkey is not just prone to exaggeration, he also
 is and can be deceptive, not only to his adversaries, but also to his
 own partners, his business associates and to the court. He deliberately
 describes his own, separate reality."

[snip]

Meanwhile, life goes on as usual in the real world.

Oh, and if you happen to need any code I might have contributed to the
kernel, it's available under the GPL.  Only.


Regards: David Weinehall
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander      (\
//  Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel   //  Dance across the winter sky //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/    (/   Full colour fire           (/

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Ingo Molnar]

first i was slighly puzzled and suspected that your mail server somehow
delayed your outgoing email for ~1.5 years then i found what i believe
is the secret message hidden in your email:

* Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:

> [...] The memory sickness [...]
> [...] I was experiencing  [...]
> [...] is constant [...]

please confirm decoding was correct! Meanwhile our secret message back
to agent 000 is:

  IN THAT CONDITION MUST NOT POST TO LKML UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!

[this message has been caps-encrypted. COMPARTMENTED 12B3. EYES ONLY.]

	Ingo

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

[ shortened CC: because it is not that inreseting ]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 14:09 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
[...]
> No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under 
> Employee
> agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and they are 
> very
> confident of this.  From a cursory viewpoint, it looks valid.  I think 

They did not and do not show in court anything (and didn't showed
anything that passed the simple checks in other places) though they were
askes several times by the judge.
So AFAICT and IMHO (and IANAL) there is no reason to believe they have
anything (except false accusations, rumors, FUD, creative selection of
truth, and lies).
So even from cursory viewpoint one should primarily see the pure facts
and afterwards (with separate quality) believe in words.

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Erik Andersen]

On Tue Oct 19, 2004 at 02:27:30PM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Pekka Pietikainen wrote:
> >arch/m68k/sun3/leds.c is available (dual BSD/GPL) for the price of two 
> >beers (I believe nobody else has touched it so it should be all mine). 
> >
> >The other files of the port to that very fine architecture are largely done
> >by other people, so unfortunately I can't relicense those.
> >
> > 
> >
> Hurray!  Got one.  You're added to the list.

Do remember to replace the included inlines with your own code.

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen             http://codepoet-consulting.com/
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Kelledin]

[I now pronounce the following benediction: IANAL.  $DEITY, give 
me the strength to show reasoned restraint.]

On Tuesday 19 October 2004 03:09 pm, you wrote:
> No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP
> covered under Employee
> agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and
> they are very
> confident of this.  From a cursory viewpoint, it looks valid. 
> I think they have a case
> (having been sued and nailed for the same type of thing by
> Novell).

So very certain you are...

...but in any case, that doesn't mean much to me.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to believe what SCO 
admits in court, rather than what SCO might have fooled you into 
believing (after all of a cursory inspection) or persuaded you 
to lie about.  And what SCO is lately forced to admit in court 
is that it has no evidence of copyright infringement in Linux.  
After over a year of claiming to have "mountains" of this 
evidence and after multiple court orders to disclose this 
evidence, the best SCO can cough up doesn't pass muster.  SCO's 
"smoking gun" samples were either nonprotectable or were cobbled 
together in a half-assed attempt at evidence doctoring.

Not to mention which, "non-literal coypright infringement" is an 
oxymoron in almost all federal circuits, so don't even go down 
that road.

[If this sounds to you like an ad-hominem attack, well...tough 
shit in advance, I'm just being realistic.  Grow some thicker 
skin.]

> Dump the FS's and NUMA guys.  Then you are nearly there for
> being squeaky clean.

So far I've seen no plausible evidence that we aren't already 
there.  The bare word of a company/CEO that's already been 
caught stretching the truth counts for pretty much nothing.

--
Kelledin
"If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does 
it still cost four figures to fix?"

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Horst von Brand]

Russell Miller <rmiller@duskglow.com> said:
> On Wednesday 20 October 2004 18:43, Eric Bambach wrote:
> > Although I own no code in the kernel, I hope to some day and offers like
> > this sicken me. It seems that most of the coders have either ignored this
> > person or flat out said no. His offer is ridiculous and he wants to rip out
> > some of the most useful code to get what he wants.
> >
> I have about five lines of code fairly deep in the kernel, and It is only 
> released under the GPL.  Even better, I'm not going to tell where. :)

I've got a few lines of my own too, and I won't release except under GPL
either.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Adam Heath]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Russell Miller wrote:

> I have about five lines of code fairly deep in the kernel, and It is only
> released under the GPL.  Even better, I'm not going to tell where. :)

I'll do that even better.  I may have sent patches in the past.  I forget what
about.  I don't want those changes under anything except the GPL.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Russell Miller]

On Wednesday 20 October 2004 18:43, Eric Bambach wrote:

> Although I own no code in the kernel, I hope to some day and offers like
> this sicken me. It seems that most of the coders have either ignored this
> person or flat out said no. His offer is ridiculous and he wants to rip out
> some of the most useful code to get what he wants.
>
I have about five lines of code fairly deep in the kernel, and It is only 
released under the GPL.  Even better, I'm not going to tell where. :)

--Russell

-- 

Russell Miller - rmiller@duskglow.com - Le Mars, IA
Duskglow Consulting - Helping companies just like you to succeed for ~ 10 yrs.
http://www.duskglow.com - 712-546-5886

RE: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Hua Zhong]

>	However I urge all you developers to stand up and say no.

What's the point? It's a troll, so just ignore him. Does he himself
sincerely believe this "business plan"? I don't think so. He just tries to
annoy and disturb people. 

Hua

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Eric Bambach]

Sorry, I have been having this nasty habit of sending out unfinished e-mail 
lately(mis-clicks). Anyways in summary a large affirmative no from key 
players would solidify Linux's position as being a collaborative and open 
project ultimately never for sale. I think it would also show large companies 
who are giving support like Novell and IBM a better idea and a concrete 
example of what open source and collaborative development is all about.

----------------------------------------
EB

> All is fine except that I can reliably "oops" it simply by trying to read
> from /proc/apm (e.g. cat /proc/apm).
> oops output and ksymoops-2.3.4 output is attached.
> Is there anything else I can contribute?

The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and
a ballistic missile.

		--Alan Cox 2000-12-08 

----------------------------------------

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Eric Bambach]

On Tuesday 19 October 2004 12:38 pm, you wrote:

> On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We
> will be contacting
> individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for
> the code we wish to
> convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will
> remain GPL
> The 50K per copy offer still stands for the whole thing if you guys can
> ever figure out
> how to set something like this up.
>

*sigh* 

Although I own no code in the kernel, I hope to some day and offers like this 
sicken me. It seems that most of the coders have either ignored this person 
or flat out said no. His offer is ridiculous and he wants to rip out some of 
the most useful code to get what he wants. 

	However I urge all you developers to stand up and say no. Just out of 
curiosity can we get AM, CK, AC,Linus and other major devolpers to say no 
publicly? As I understand it these people have all made significant 
contributions to the kernel  and keeping their code GPL would ensure all this 
joker could get (for proprietary greed only shady-business practice purposes) 
would be useless in any real project.

	I think a large "no" from key players would be a great show of strength in 
the ideaologies and commitment many of the developers on this list hold about 
the kernel. It would also go a long way in affirming that the true len

----------------------------------------
EB

> All is fine except that I can reliably "oops" it simply by trying to read
> from /proc/apm (e.g. cat /proc/apm).
> oops output and ksymoops-2.3.4 output is attached.
> Is there anything else I can contribute?

The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and
a ballistic missile.

		--Alan Cox 2000-12-08 

----------------------------------------

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Pekka Pietikainen wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We
> > will be contacting individual contributors and negotiating with each
> > copyright holder for the code we wish to convert on a case by case basis.
> 
> arch/m68k/sun3/leds.c is available (dual BSD/GPL) for the price of two beers 
> (I believe nobody else has touched it so it should be all mine). 
> 
> The other files of the port to that very fine architecture are largely done
> by other people, so unfortunately I can't relicense those.

Aarghl, a shameless m68k hacker!

And I thought we all did it for The Big Fun(tm), and cannot be bought ;-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bill Davidsen]

Dax Kelson wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 11:38, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> 
>>Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side 
>>of Unixware from a
>>competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise 
>>detail and factual
>>documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was 
>>taken from Unix.
>>We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough 
>>uncertianty to warrant
>>removal of the infringing portions.
>>
>>We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our 
>>products that
>>SCO claims was stolen from Unix. They are:
>>
>>JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
>>
> 
> 
> This isn't SCO code. This goes back to SCO's claims of "control rights"
> over any source code that has been in the same room as UNIX code.
> 
> These "control rights" depend on SCOs interpretation of what a 
> derivative work is. This is a contractual dispute, an attempt of SCO to
> reframe what a derivative work is and a big up hill battle for SCO as
> virtually all the parties of original contracts have in their
> declarations not supported SCO claims of "control rights".

This "we gave you the idea" is dangerous ground, Honeywell bought the 
rights to MULTICS, from which UNIX was derivative at the acronym level, 
and LINUX is clearly derived from UNIX since it uses the same symbols, 
upper and lower case alpha, digits, and the smoking gun the underscore.

Maybe Honeywell should sue SCO?

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   CTO TMR Associates, Inc
   Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bill Davidsen]

Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>  > I've got plenty of peyote around -- just watered them this morning.
> 
> What happened to your peyote-based cure for arthritis? I can't seem to 
> find either timpanogas.org or utah-nac.org at the moment.
> 
>  > Dump the FS's and NUMA guys.  Then you are nearly there for being
>  > squeaky clean.
> 
> Now, far be it for this old Coyote to sense something amiss in a person 
> who's associated with both SCO and a controlled substance. Yes, I'm 
> aware of recent Utah Court rulings; they only apply to members of the 
> Native American Church.
> 
> Not that SCO would mind "tainting" Linux by associating its developers 
> with an illegal substance...

You mean they're gonna give us some weed?

;-) if it isn't obvious...

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   CTO TMR Associates, Inc
   Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bill Davidsen]

Bastiaan Spandaw wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 22:09, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> 
> 
>>>>JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
>>
>>And Numa also.
>>
>>
>>>This isn't SCO code. This goes back to SCO's claims of "control rights"
>>>over any source code that has been in the same room as UNIX code.
> 
> 
>>No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under 
>>Employee agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and they 
>>are very confident of this.  

Non-compete agreements are VERY tricky, and in some cases are only valid 
until/unless the information is made available to the public. Let a 
lawyer explain the details, but available to the public seems to mean 
that if A steals the info and publishes it, B is no longer bound, or 
something like that. Again, let a lawyer clarify, I know there is an 
issue but I don't claim to understand the ramifications.
> 
> 
> bwhahaha...
> 
> nice try..
> 
> Do you reallly think you (on your own) can defend al those claims?

Since they are SCO's claims, why should he? Or do you wish to attach his 
opinion that SCO seems confident?

> (better than all lawyers/persons involved???!?!?!)
> Even though all of them (claims) have been disputed by people more
> knowledgeable than you?
> 
> Please leave LKML.
> 
> We don't like you nor anything you have to say.

You don't like what he says so you try to shut him up? That argument 
doesn't go far in court.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   CTO TMR Associates, Inc
   Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Martin Waitz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 755 bytes --]

hoi :)

On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 12:18:25AM -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> I was doing this with perl and SQL before I
> ever heard of RCU.  If you don't want to lock a table (or didn't realize
> SQL had such a thing as table locking :-) you just fetch a value, make
> some calculation on it, then do the update iff that value has not
> changed.  If it has changed you fetch the new value and go back to step

what you described is not RCU.
it's more something like seqlocks

RCU means: you always read without any locking.
when you want to write, you create a new copy of the data instead
and switch over a pointer when you are done.
if you are sure that the old pointer is not used any move, you can
free the old value.

-- 
Martin Waitz

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Lee Revell wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 00:18, Lee Revell wrote:
>> On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 23:45, Ryan Anderson wrote:
>>> RCU - originally a paper, implemented in Dynix and in other operating
>>> systems from the paper (and patent), implemented in Linux as well.
>>
>> You could also make a strong argument that that patent is invalid
>> because RCU is obvious.
>
> (replying to myself to avert flames)  OK, after reading the RCU docs, in
> all fairness there is a lot more to it than I described, in particular
> the database analogy is not quite valid because most of the hard parts
> are handled automagically by the DB.  But, my point remains valid, RCU
> seems like too general a concept to be patentable, and would probably be
> obvious to many people on this list.
>
> Lee
>

Next SCO will show that some company they bought in bankrupcy
for a dollar had patented register move instructions, to whit;
"The copying of the contents of one register to another without
changing the contents of the source register...."

Then they will require that Intel, Motorola, and others pay them
billions and billions.... It's all lawyering (spelled wrong).

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.6.9 on an i686 machine (5537.79 GrumpyMips).
                  98.36% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jens Axboe]

On Wed, Oct 20 2004, Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 13:41 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> [...]
> > easy.  We have something up our
> > sleeve that will be a bit of a surprise to SCO on the horizon.  Stay 
> > tuned ......
> 
> SCO is already as good as dead. No need to invest any work in that ...

And Jeff is a nutter, no need to invest more time on that issue.

I'll sell my parts of the block layer for ONE BILLION DOLLARS! Murhaha.

-- 
Jens Axboe

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 13:41 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
[...]
> easy.  We have something up our
> sleeve that will be a bit of a surprise to SCO on the horizon.  Stay 
> tuned ......

SCO is already as good as dead. No need to invest any work in that ...

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[John Alvord]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 00:18:25 -0400, Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>
wrote:

>On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 23:45, Ryan Anderson wrote:
>> RCU - originally a paper, implemented in Dynix and in other operating
>> systems from the paper (and patent), implemented in Linux as well.
>
>You could also make a strong argument that that patent is invalid
>because RCU is obvious.  I was doing this with perl and SQL before I
>ever heard of RCU.  If you don't want to lock a table (or didn't realize
>SQL had such a thing as table locking :-) you just fetch a value, make
>some calculation on it, then do the update iff that value has not
>changed.  If it has changed you fetch the new value and go back to step
>1.  It's just the obvious way to update a shared data structure if you
>have cmpxchg but no locking.

1972, IBM S/370 instruction set, CS Compare and Swap (32 bits) and CDS
Compare Double and Swap (64 bits), atomic compare and replace if test
equal. The Principles of Operation book even had sample code...

john alvord

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Matt Mackall]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 08:06:07PM -0400, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Matt Mackall wrote:
> 
> >On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 04:01:22PM -0400, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> >>FYI, this DR-DOS is pretty interesting. I knew the founder of
> >>Digital Research, Gary Kildall. They probably would do well
> >>to check their facts before they put a history-rewrite on
> >>their web-pages. I think the DR-DOS is a hack of freedos
> >>and I think they might try the same thing with Linux.
> >
> >Dear wrongbot,
> >
> >DR-DOS dates back to the mid-80's, about a decade before FreeDOS.
> >Anyone who was anywhere near a PC back then should know this.
> 
> Read their web page. The current "DR-DOS" is an embedded MS-DOS
> clone. The original DR-DOS was an 8086 "CP/M"-like DOS that
> Gary didn't get to show to IBM because he was out flying is
> airplane.

And they're the same. Novell acquired it from DR around the time it
was famously killed in the marketplace by Win3.1 compatibility
bogosity and Win95 bundling of DOS. Then they sold it to Noorda's
Caldera, who used it in their famous antitrust suit against Microsoft.
By this time it was already positioned as an embedded MS-DOS
replacement as Microsoft had EOLed its DOS offerings and there wasn't
any use for desktop DOS at that point.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Lee Revell]

On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 00:18, Lee Revell wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 23:45, Ryan Anderson wrote:
> > RCU - originally a paper, implemented in Dynix and in other operating
> > systems from the paper (and patent), implemented in Linux as well.
> 
> You could also make a strong argument that that patent is invalid
> because RCU is obvious.

(replying to myself to avert flames)  OK, after reading the RCU docs, in
all fairness there is a lot more to it than I described, in particular
the database analogy is not quite valid because most of the hard parts
are handled automagically by the DB.  But, my point remains valid, RCU
seems like too general a concept to be patentable, and would probably be
obvious to many people on this list.

Lee

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Lee Revell]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 23:45, Ryan Anderson wrote:
> RCU - originally a paper, implemented in Dynix and in other operating
> systems from the paper (and patent), implemented in Linux as well.

You could also make a strong argument that that patent is invalid
because RCU is obvious.  I was doing this with perl and SQL before I
ever heard of RCU.  If you don't want to lock a table (or didn't realize
SQL had such a thing as table locking :-) you just fetch a value, make
some calculation on it, then do the update iff that value has not
changed.  If it has changed you fetch the new value and go back to step
1.  It's just the obvious way to update a shared data structure if you
have cmpxchg but no locking.

Lee 

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Ryan Anderson]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 02:09:28PM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> XFS, JFS and NUMA are easy ones.

As I understand it, JFS was originally written for AIX.  The OS/2 team
at IBM rewrote it from scratch for OS/2.  Their version was cleaner, so
*that* got ported to AIX. (Maybe 5L, not really sure on versions here.)
The JFS for OS/2 is the predecessor to the Linux version.

Where's the Unix IP infection come from?

> RCU and NUMA are not.

RCU - originally a paper, implemented in Dynix and in other operating
systems from the paper (and patent), implemented in Linux as well.

Oh, and disclaimers:

IANAL, all knowledge gleaned from extensive reading, not personal
experience.  Feel free to flame me if I screwed something up.  (And I
apologize if I did so.)

-- 

Ryan Anderson
  sometimes Pug Majere

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bastiaan Spandaw]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 22:09, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> >>JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
> And Numa also.
> 
> >This isn't SCO code. This goes back to SCO's claims of "control rights"
> >over any source code that has been in the same room as UNIX code.

> No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under 
> Employee agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and they 
> are very confident of this.  

bwhahaha...

nice try..

Do you reallly think you (on your own) can defend al those claims?
(better than all lawyers/persons involved???!?!?!)
Even though all of them (claims) have been disputed by people more
knowledgeable than you?

Please leave LKML.

We don't like you nor anything you have to say.

Not sincerely,

Bastiaan Spandaw

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Horst von Brand]

"Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@drdos.com> said:
> Dax Kelson wrote:
> >>JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.

> And Numa also.

> >This isn't SCO code. This goes back to SCO's claims of "control rights"
> >over any source code that has been in the same room as UNIX code.
> >
> >These "control rights" depend on SCOs interpretation of what a 
> >derivative work is. This is a contractual dispute, an attempt of SCO to
> >reframe what a derivative work is and a big up hill battle for SCO as
> >virtually all the parties of original contracts have in their
> >declarations not supported SCO claims of "control rights".
> >
> >Stephen D. Vuksanovich, Scott Nelson, Richard A. McDonough III, Robert
> >C. Swanson, Ira Kistenberg, David Frasure, and Geoffrey D. Green.
> >
> >Four of them are (or were at relevant time periods) AT&T employees.
> >
> >See: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041007032319488
> >
> >Besides the declarations, there is other items that don't back SCO
> >"control rights" claims such as the $echo newletter, and amendment X to
> >the contract.

> No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under
> Employee agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux,

If they have this, why don't they show the evidence? It has been more than
a year and a half, and no shred of anything even remotely resembling
evidence has shown up. To me, this says clearly that there is none (I for
one would not go around spending a few millions of dollars a month just for
fun, if I could stop the bleeding by just showing what I will have to show
anyway later on).

>                                                                     and
> they are very confident of this.

That is for sure. But they have nothing more than that confidence.

>                                   From a cursory viewpoint, it looks
> valid.

Look closer.

>         I think they have a case (having been sued and nailed for the
> same type of thing by Novell).  It's better to remove these code areas
> and make the vendors maintain them as separate patches not in the tree,
> like what happened to intermezzo.

That is complete madness.

>                                    It's low impact for Linux and the
> other vendors.

Right. SMP, NUMA, filesystems are "low impact".

> XFS, JFS and NUMA are easy ones.

If you don't use them, that is.

> RCU and NUMA are not.  Hey, Novell just handed over their patent
> portfolio to Linux, use their patents for SMP and RCU.  These areas are
> not trivial to dump out of the kernel.  If Linux did dump the infringing
> FS's, it would be a good faith effort to limit SCO's claims.

Linux (Linus et al) has done more than a good-faith effort to remove any
infringing code: They have repeatedly asked for details on what is
illegally in the kernel (and why), to remove it ASAP. No answer worthy of
that name. Likewise, the kernel code has been compared to SysV and other
variants (by people with access to the relevant sources), and nothing fishy
has shown up to here AFAIK.

> SMP and RCU look a little tougher to defend.  I remember a Brainshare
> session at SLC where the unixware guys were disclosing this stuff in
> public sessions.  Perhaps Novell could go back and publish those
> Brainshare slides on their website.  So much for claiming SMP and RCU are
> not in the public domain.

AFAIU, RCU is patented (now IBM holds it). It is certainly not in the
public domain.

> Dump the FS's and NUMA guys.  Then you are nearly there for being 
> squeaky clean.

Better just dump it all. Or start off a *BSD variant, where there is _no_
SCOX complications, and no need to shell out a few hundred millions to get
the relevant rights (yes, that is what they are worth; the 50K offer is
completely ridiculous). Note that just a few people declining your offer
makes it moot, and I know for a fact that many here on LKML will pass such
an offer.

Why don't you go trolling elsewhere?
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Matt Mackall wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 04:01:22PM -0400, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
>> FYI, this DR-DOS is pretty interesting. I knew the founder of
>> Digital Research, Gary Kildall. They probably would do well
>> to check their facts before they put a history-rewrite on
>> their web-pages. I think the DR-DOS is a hack of freedos
>> and I think they might try the same thing with Linux.
>
> Dear wrongbot,
>
> DR-DOS dates back to the mid-80's, about a decade before FreeDOS.
> Anyone who was anywhere near a PC back then should know this.

Read their web page. The current "DR-DOS" is an embedded MS-DOS
clone. The original DR-DOS was an 8086 "CP/M"-like DOS that
Gary didn't get to show to IBM because he was out flying is
airplane.


>
> -- 
> Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.
>

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.6.9 on an i686 machine (5537.79 GrumpyMips).
                  98.36% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 00:16, Jim Nelson wrote:
> <troll-bite>
[...]
> done by SCO employees, then why are they suing IBM?
[...]
> </troll-bite>

Because they wanted IBM to buy SCO thus rising the stocks even more.
Nothing else, pure greed.

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Buddy Lucas]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:38:03 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com> wrote:

> Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side
> of Unixware from a
> competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise
> detail and factual
> documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was
> taken from Unix.
> We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough
> uncertianty to warrant
> removal of the infringing portions.

I can only see two possible explanations for this remarkable event.

1. You're lying through your teeth.
2. You are a SCO puppet.

I'm guessing 2. You don't exist. Go away.


Cheers,
Buddy

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
 > I've got plenty of peyote around -- just watered them this morning.

What happened to your peyote-based cure for arthritis? I can't seem to 
find either timpanogas.org or utah-nac.org at the moment.

 > Dump the FS's and NUMA guys.  Then you are nearly there for being
 > squeaky clean.

Now, far be it for this old Coyote to sense something amiss in a person 
who's associated with both SCO and a controlled substance. Yes, I'm 
aware of recent Utah Court rulings; they only apply to members of the 
Native American Church.

Not that SCO would mind "tainting" Linux by associating its developers 
with an illegal substance...

Gosh darn, there I go again, getting all conspiratorial...

..Scott

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
site: http://www.coyotegulch.com
blog: http://chaoticcoyote.blogspot.com

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jim Nelson]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Dax Kelson wrote:
> 
>>>
>>> JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
>>>   
> 
> And Numa also.
> 
>>>   
>>
>>
>> This isn't SCO code. This goes back to SCO's claims of "control rights"
>> over any source code that has been in the same room as UNIX code.
>>
>> These "control rights" depend on SCOs interpretation of what a 
>> derivative work is. This is a contractual dispute, an attempt of SCO to
>> reframe what a derivative work is and a big up hill battle for SCO as
>> virtually all the parties of original contracts have in their
>> declarations not supported SCO claims of "control rights".
>>
>> Stephen D. Vuksanovich, Scott Nelson, Richard A. McDonough III, Robert
>> C. Swanson, Ira Kistenberg, David Frasure, and Geoffrey D. Green.
>>
>> Four of them are (or were at relevant time periods) AT&T employees.
>>
>> See: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041007032319488
>>
>> Besides the declarations, there is other items that don't back SCO
>> "control rights" claims such as the $echo newletter, and amendment X to
>> the contract.
>>
>> Dax Kelson
>>
>>
>>  
>>
> No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under 
> Employee
> agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and they are 
> very
> confident of this.  From a cursory viewpoint, it looks valid.  I think 
> they have a case
> (having been sued and nailed for the same type of thing by Novell).  
> It's better to remove
> these code areas and make the vendors maintain them as separate patches 
> not in the tree,
> like what happened to intermezzo.  It's low impact for Linux and the 
> other vendors.
> 
> XFS, JFS and NUMA are easy ones.
> 
> RCU and NUMA are not.  Hey, Novell just handed over their patent 
> portfolio to Linux,
> use their patents for SMP and RCU.  These areas are not trivial to dump 
> out of the kernel.
> If Linux did dump the infringing FS's, it would be a good faith effort 
> to limit SCO's claims.
> 
> SMP and RCU look a little tougher to defend.  I remember a Brainshare 
> session at SLC
> where the unixware guys were disclosing this stuff in public sessions.  
> Perhaps Novell
> could go back and publish those Brainshare slides on their website.  So 
> much for claiming
> SMP and RCU are not in the public domain.
> 
> Dump the FS's and NUMA guys.  Then you are nearly there for being 
> squeaky clean.
> 
> Jeff
> 


<troll-bite>

You know, SCO sounds like the guys I've worked with when they failed a 
drug test - "C'mon, I was at a party, I was only around the stuff, I 
never touched it, you can't fire me!"

 From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM :

SCO currently claims:

     * Any code belonging to SCO that might have been GPL'd was done by 
SCO employees without proper legal authorization, and thus is not 
legally GPL'd.
     * That for code to be GPL'd, the code's copyright owner must put a 
GPL notice before the code, but since SCO itself wasn't the one to add 
the notices, the code was never GPL'd.

and:

SCO's major claims have now been reported as relating to the following 
components of the Linux kernel:

     * symmetric multiprocessing (SMP),
     * non-uniform memory access (NUMA) multiprocessing,
     * the read-copy-update (RCU) locking strategy,
     * SGI's Extended File System (XFS),
     * and IBM's JFS journaling file system

These claims flow from the accusation of breach of contract. The 
contract between IBM and AT&T (to which SCO claims to be successor in 
interest) allows IBM to use the SVR4 code, but the SVR4 code, plus any 
derivative works made from that code, must be held confidential by IBM. 
According to IBM's interpretation of the contract, and the 
interpretation published by AT&T in their "$ echo" newsletter in 1985, 
"derivative works" means any works containing SVR4 code. But according 
to SCO's interpretation, "derivative works" also includes any code built 
on top of SVR4, even if that does not contain, or even never contained, 
any SVR4 code. Thus, according to SCO, any AIX operating system code 
that IBM developed must be kept confidential, even if it contains 
nothing from SVR4.

so:

If SCO is saying that any code in the kernel that belongs to SCO was 
done by SCO employees, then why are they suing IBM?

Are they claiming that AIX was developed by SCO employees?

Or are they claiming that Linux was developed former SCO employees 
working for IBM?

</troll-bite>

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Ramón Rey Vicente]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

| On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We
| will be contacting
| individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for
| the code we wish to
| convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will
| remain GPL

BSD "revisited" license is GPL-compatible, but

http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

Mere aggregation of two programs means putting them side by side on the
same CD-ROM or hard disk. We use this term in the case where they are
separate programs, not parts of a single program. In this case, if one
of the programs is covered by the GPL, it has no effect on the other
program.

Combining two modules means connecting them together so that they form a
single larger program. If either part is covered by the GPL, the whole
combination must also be released under the GPL--if you can't, or won't,
do that, you may not combine them.

What constitutes combining two parts into one program? This is a legal
question, which ultimately judges will decide. We believe that a proper
criterion depends both on the mechanism of communication (exec, pipes,
rpc, function calls within a shared address space, etc.) and the
semantics of the communication (what kinds of information are interchanged).

If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are
definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run
linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely means
combining them into one program.

By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication
mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are
used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But
if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging
complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider
the two parts as combined into a larger program.
- --
Ram?n Rey Vicente <ramon.rey en hispalinux.es>
JID rreylinux@jabber.org - GPG public key id 0x9F28E377
GPG Fingerprint 0BC2 8014 2445 51E8 DE87  C888 C385 A9D3 9F28 E377
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFBdYaQw4Wp058o43cRAq+wAJ4+BISSW8RTPLIoW5SWgnU9GwgPJgCeNKUY
lGiMA0vZgcS48T7Gr7uvfuw=
=Pfg5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Paul Fulghum]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 16:02, Pekka Pietikainen wrote:
> arch/m68k/sun3/leds.c is available (dual BSD/GPL) for the price of two beers 

Hmmm... what brand?
I hope you hold out for more than Coors Light.

-- 
Paul Fulghum
paulkf@microgate.com

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Pekka Pietikainen]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We
> will be contacting individual contributors and negotiating with each
> copyright holder for the code we wish to convert on a case by case basis.
Hi

arch/m68k/sun3/leds.c is available (dual BSD/GPL) for the price of two beers 
(I believe nobody else has touched it so it should be all mine). 

The other files of the port to that very fine architecture are largely done
by other people, so unfortunately I can't relicense those.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Matt Mackall]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 04:01:22PM -0400, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> FYI, this DR-DOS is pretty interesting. I knew the founder of
> Digital Research, Gary Kildall. They probably would do well
> to check their facts before they put a history-rewrite on
> their web-pages. I think the DR-DOS is a hack of freedos
> and I think they might try the same thing with Linux.

Dear wrongbot,

DR-DOS dates back to the mid-80's, about a decade before FreeDOS.
Anyone who was anywhere near a PC back then should know this.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Dax Kelson]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 11:38, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side 
> of Unixware from a
> competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise 
> detail and factual
> documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was 
> taken from Unix.
> We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough 
> uncertianty to warrant
> removal of the infringing portions.
> 
> We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our 
> products that
> SCO claims was stolen from Unix. They are:
> 
> JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
> 

This isn't SCO code. This goes back to SCO's claims of "control rights"
over any source code that has been in the same room as UNIX code.

These "control rights" depend on SCOs interpretation of what a 
derivative work is. This is a contractual dispute, an attempt of SCO to
reframe what a derivative work is and a big up hill battle for SCO as
virtually all the parties of original contracts have in their
declarations not supported SCO claims of "control rights".

Stephen D. Vuksanovich, Scott Nelson, Richard A. McDonough III, Robert
C. Swanson, Ira Kistenberg, David Frasure, and Geoffrey D. Green.

Four of them are (or were at relevant time periods) AT&T employees.

See: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041007032319488

Besides the declarations, there is other items that don't back SCO
"control rights" claims such as the $echo newletter, and amendment X to
the contract.

Dax Kelson

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 21:38, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> 
> > Note it's all 3-letter stuff. They just couldn't do
> > any better...... Maybe SCO has a patent on all 3-letter
> > logos and that's what they are complaining about!! I'm
> > pretty sure the Intel guys will get a kick out of the
> > "SMP" claim!
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Dick Johnson
> 
> 
> They also claim Linux NUMA (a four letter word) is their as well, I 
> forgot to mention
> this one. I removed this one also. This claim is a little more out there 
> since Dolphin
> and Sequent developed hardware around it and on other Unixes. I don't 
> think I agree with
> this one but we don't use NUMA either.
> 

Hey, why do you rip out all the code ? 

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v1.0/linux-1.0.tar.bz2

contains none of it.

tglx

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Pekka Pietikainen wrote:

>On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>  
>
>>On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We
>>will be contacting individual contributors and negotiating with each
>>copyright holder for the code we wish to convert on a case by case basis.
>>    
>>
>Hi
>
>arch/m68k/sun3/leds.c is available (dual BSD/GPL) for the price of two beers 
>(I believe nobody else has touched it so it should be all mine). 
>
>The other files of the port to that very fine architecture are largely done
>by other people, so unfortunately I can't relicense those.
>
>  
>
Hurray!  Got one.  You're added to the list.

:-)

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Thomas Gleixner wrote:

>Hey, why do you rip out all the code ? 
>
>http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v1.0/linux-1.0.tar.bz2
>
>contains none of it.
>
>tglx
>
>
>
>  
>

Not a bad suggestion.

:-)

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Diego Calleja]

El Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:05:34 -0600 "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@drdos.com> escribió:


> You're awesome. We don't use XFS, JFS, or SMP for our appliances so 
> these changes
> have little impact for us.

Just wondering, how did you remove RCU? From a quick grep it's used in generic
code like fs/dcache.c or kernel/sched.c. Did you remove process scheduler and
filesystem support for your customers too? Or I'm missing something about RCU?

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Dax Kelson wrote:

>>
>>JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
>>    
>>
And Numa also.

>>    
>>
>
>This isn't SCO code. This goes back to SCO's claims of "control rights"
>over any source code that has been in the same room as UNIX code.
>
>These "control rights" depend on SCOs interpretation of what a 
>derivative work is. This is a contractual dispute, an attempt of SCO to
>reframe what a derivative work is and a big up hill battle for SCO as
>virtually all the parties of original contracts have in their
>declarations not supported SCO claims of "control rights".
>
>Stephen D. Vuksanovich, Scott Nelson, Richard A. McDonough III, Robert
>C. Swanson, Ira Kistenberg, David Frasure, and Geoffrey D. Green.
>
>Four of them are (or were at relevant time periods) AT&T employees.
>
>See: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041007032319488
>
>Besides the declarations, there is other items that don't back SCO
>"control rights" claims such as the $echo newletter, and amendment X to
>the contract.
>
>Dax Kelson
>
>
>  
>
No.  They seem to have some factual concrete evidence IP covered under 
Employee
agreements was used and subsequently converted into Linux, and they are 
very
confident of this.  From a cursory viewpoint, it looks valid.  I think 
they have a case
(having been sued and nailed for the same type of thing by Novell).  
It's better to remove
these code areas and make the vendors maintain them as separate patches 
not in the tree,
like what happened to intermezzo.  It's low impact for Linux and the 
other vendors.

XFS, JFS and NUMA are easy ones.

RCU and NUMA are not.  Hey, Novell just handed over their patent 
portfolio to Linux,
use their patents for SMP and RCU.  These areas are not trivial to dump 
out of the kernel.
If Linux did dump the infringing FS's, it would be a good faith effort 
to limit SCO's claims.

SMP and RCU look a little tougher to defend.  I remember a Brainshare 
session at SLC
where the unixware guys were disclosing this stuff in public sessions.  
Perhaps Novell
could go back and publish those Brainshare slides on their website.  So 
much for claiming
SMP and RCU are not in the public domain.

Dump the FS's and NUMA guys.  Then you are nearly there for being 
squeaky clean.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Rik van Riel wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>> We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our
>> products that SCO claims was stolen from Unix. They are:
>>
>> JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
>
> Don't tell your customers you removed all the cool stuff.
> Oh wait, they'll find your lkml post through Google...
>
> Lets just hope your marketing folks don't find out about
> this mail. ;)

Note it's all 3-letter stuff. They just couldn't do
any better...... Maybe SCO has a patent on all 3-letter
logos and that's what they are complaining about!!  I'm
pretty sure the Intel guys will get a kick out of the
"SMP" claim!

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.6.9 on an i686 machine (5537.79 GrumpyMips).
                  98.36% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Kurt Wall wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 19, 2004, Jeff V. Merkey took 66 lines to troll:
>>
>> Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side
>> of Unixware from a
>> competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise
>> detail and factual
>> documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was
>> taken from Unix.
>> We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough
>> uncertianty to warrant
>> removal of the infringing portions.
>
> But, naturally, you can't reveal the precise files and lines of code that
> SCO claim was stolen. For $DEITY's sake, you're still a Canopy stooge and
> hanger on, even though you're smart enough to know better. How much did
> NFT or Canopy give you to agree to this preposterous claim?
>
> Welcome to my killfile.
>
> Kurt

Some people just don't know how to tell a joke! I wonder how
many companies have "non-exclusive" licenses to UNIX from AT&T?
I don't recall SCO buying back any of those licenses. In particular,
AT&T gave a non-exclusive license to many universities, including
UC/Berkeley, where most of the student-written code came from
before there was a Linux. Don't let SCO crap bother you. They
don't have a leg to stand on. They think they "own" Unix while,
in fact, it was given away long before they latched onto its last
craze.

FYI, this DR-DOS is pretty interesting. I knew the founder of
Digital Research, Gary Kildall. They probably would do well
to check their facts before they put a history-rewrite on
their web-pages. I think the DR-DOS is a hack of freedos
and I think they might try the same thing with Linux.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.6.9 on an i686 machine (5537.79 GrumpyMips).
                  98.36% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[viro]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We 
> will be contacting
> individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for 
> the code we wish to
> convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will 
> remain GPL

... thus making the result impossible to distribute unless you satisfy all
requirements imposed by GPL.  Have fun.

Oh, and don't bother contacting me regarding any code I'd worked on - the
answer hadn't changed.  If English translation had been unclear, maybe the
original will help: poshel ty na huj so swoimi predlozheniyami.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[David Johnson]

On Tuesday 19 October 2004 18:38, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> The 50K per copy offer still stands for the whole thing if you guys can
> ever figure out
> how to set something like this up.
>

You seem to be under the misapprehension that people actually want to do this. 
But don't worry, I'm sure that will be cleared up real soon.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Diego Calleja wrote:

>Just wondering, how did you remove RCU? From a quick grep it's used in generic
>code like fs/dcache.c or kernel/sched.c. Did you remove process scheduler and
>filesystem support for your customers too? Or I'm missing something about RCU?
>-
>  
>
That's one's a mess.  Looks like some late nights.  I guess we could 
claim "essential facility" on this one,
this will be some serious work ......

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Ross Biro]

Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com>

IIRC, SCO bought drdos a long time ago (when they were caldera).  That
makes me think your evaluation of the situation is a little biased.

And to save you time, I'm with Russell, none of the work I've ever
contributed is available under any license other than the GPL.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Diego Calleja wrote:

>El Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:05:34 -0600 "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@drdos.com> escribió:
>
>
>  
>
>>You're awesome. We don't use XFS, JFS, or SMP for our appliances so 
>>these changes
>>have little impact for us.
>>    
>>
>
>Just wondering, how did you remove RCU? From a quick grep it's used in generic
>code like fs/dcache.c or kernel/sched.c. Did you remove process scheduler and
>filesystem support for your customers too? Or I'm missing something about RCU?
>
>  
>
Good question.  One version we are working on doesn't even use Linus' 
kernel.  The appliance
does however.  This one does require some tough work.  The FS's were 
easy.  We have something up our
sleeve that will be a bit of a surprise to SCO on the horizon.  Stay 
tuned ......

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Richard B. Johnson wrote:

> Note it's all 3-letter stuff. They just couldn't do
> any better...... Maybe SCO has a patent on all 3-letter
> logos and that's what they are complaining about!! I'm
> pretty sure the Intel guys will get a kick out of the
> "SMP" claim!
>
> Cheers,
> Dick Johnson


They also claim Linux NUMA (a four letter word) is their as well, I 
forgot to mention
this one. I removed this one also. This claim is a little more out there 
since Dolphin
and Sequent developed hardware around it and on other Unixes. I don't 
think I agree with
this one but we don't use NUMA either.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Ross Biro wrote:

>Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey@drdos.com>
>
>IIRC, SCO bought drdos a long time ago (when they were caldera).  That
>makes me think your evaluation of the situation is a little biased.
>
>And to save you time, I'm with Russell, none of the work I've ever
>contributed is available under any license other than the GPL.
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>  
>
Bryan Sparks (who left Caldera years back and bought DRDOS from Canopy) 
owns DRDOS and
not SCO. Bryan also supports Linux and always has. Bryan also is the 
person who backed M$
into a corner and stopped them from crushing planet earth. He's one of 
the biggest friends Linux has
and was pushing Linux in the early 1990s. Caldera and Canopy do not deal 
in DRDOS anymore.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Rik van Riel]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our
> products that SCO claims was stolen from Unix. They are:
> 
> JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.

Don't tell your customers you removed all the cool stuff.
Oh wait, they'll find your lkml post through Google...

Lets just hope your marketing folks don't find out about
this mail. ;)

-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Andre Hedrick]

Jeff,

I can ship you some hippie cabbage from Berkeley California if you are
fresh out of Peyote.

Cheers,

Andre

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> >Ok,
> > despite some naming confusion (expanation: I'm a retard), I did end up
> >doing the 2.6.9 release today. And it wasn't the same as the "-final" test
> >release (see explanation above).
> >
> >Excuses aside, not a lot of changes since -rc4 (which was the last
> >announced test-kernel), mainly some UML updates that don't affect anybody
> >else. And a number of one-liners or compiler fixes. Full list appended.
> >
> >		Linus
> >  
> >
> The memory sickness with disappearing buffers, and the BIO callback 
> problems with the
> SCSI layer previously reported appear to be corrected. This release is 
> very solid and
> withstands 400 MB/S I/O to disk from 3GB/1GB split kernel/user memory 
> configurations
> and does not have the disappearing memory problems I was experiencing 
> with massive
> BIO/skb I/O loading. The memory pressure being exerted is constant and 
> the kernel
> holds steady and stable enough for us to use and ship in our products 
> based on our
> testing of the 2.6.9 release over two days.
> 
> On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We 
> will be contacting
> individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for 
> the code we wish to
> convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will 
> remain GPL
> The 50K per copy offer still stands for the whole thing if you guys can 
> ever figure out
> how to set something like this up.
> :-)
> 
> Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side 
> of Unixware from a
> competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise 
> detail and factual
> documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was 
> taken from Unix.
> We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough 
> uncertianty to warrant
> removal of the infringing portions.
> 
> We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our 
> products that
> SCO claims was stolen from Unix. They are:
> 
> JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
> 
> They make claims of other portions of Linux which were taken, however, 
> these other claims
> do not appear to be supported with factual evidence.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote:

>On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>  
>
>>On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We 
>>will be contacting
>>individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for 
>>the code we wish to
>>convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will 
>>remain GPL
>>    
>>
>
>... thus making the result impossible to distribute unless you satisfy all
>requirements imposed by GPL.  Have fun.
>
>Oh, and don't bother contacting me regarding any code I'd worked on - the
>answer hadn't changed.  If English translation had been unclear, maybe the
>original will help: poshel ty na huj so swoimi predlozheniyami.
>  
>
Cherokee:

U-ne-la-nv-hi U-da-do-li-s-di Ka-ne i-s-di Go-we-la-i Do-na-da Go-Hv-i 
Go-li-ga-hi Ni-go-di-s-ge-di

Translation:

Bless you for your frank answer, and your words. Til meet meet again and 
I understand that's
just the way it is.

The GPL code will remain GPL and the license will be complied with -- to 
the letter.

Wa-do

Jeff
Wa-ya Ge-tlv-hv-s-di
(The wolf that howls)

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Kurt Wall]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004, Jeff V. Merkey took 66 lines to troll:
> 
> Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side 
> of Unixware from a
> competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise 
> detail and factual
> documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was 
> taken from Unix.
> We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough 
> uncertianty to warrant
> removal of the infringing portions.

But, naturally, you can't reveal the precise files and lines of code that
SCO claim was stolen. For $DEITY's sake, you're still a Canopy stooge and
hanger on, even though you're smart enough to know better. How much did
NFT or Canopy give you to agree to this preposterous claim?

Welcome to my killfile.

Kurt
-- 
Naeser's Law:
	You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Russell King]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 783 bytes --]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We 
> will be contacting
> individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for 
> the code we wish to
> convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will 
> remain GPL
> The 50K per copy offer still stands for the whole thing if you guys can 
> ever figure out
> how to set something like this up.
> :-)

Don't bother contacting me.  I'll give you my answer now.  Refused for
all work contributed by myself.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 PCMCIA      - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
                 2.6 Serial core

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Kurt Wall wrote:

>On Tue, Oct 19, 2004, Jeff V. Merkey took 66 lines to troll:
>  
>
>>Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side 
>>of Unixware from a
>>competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise 
>>detail and factual
>>documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was 
>>taken from Unix.
>>We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough 
>>uncertianty to warrant
>>removal of the infringing portions.
>>    
>>
>
>But, naturally, you can't reveal the precise files and lines of code that
>SCO claim was stolen. For $DEITY's sake, you're still a Canopy stooge and
>hanger on, even though you're smart enough to know better. How much did
>NFT or Canopy give you to agree to this preposterous claim?
>
>Welcome to my killfile.
>
>Kurt
>  
>
Yes, I can reveal them. All of XFS, All of JFS, and All of the SMP 
Support in Linux. I have no
idea what the hell RCU is and when I find it, I'll remove it from the code.

I don't work for Canopy. I know those guys but we parted ways a few 
years back. Utah Valley
is sort of incenstuous, if you lived here, you would understand. It's a 
small place.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Andre Hedrick wrote:

>Jeff,
>
>I can ship you some hippie cabbage from Berkeley California if you are
>fresh out of Peyote.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Andre
>
>Andre Hedrick
>LAD Storage Consulting Group
>
>  
>
Hey Andre,

I've got plenty of peyote around -- just watered them this morning. 
Hippie Cabbage is legal in California?

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Rik van Riel wrote:

>On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>  
>
>>We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our
>>products that SCO claims was stolen from Unix. They are:
>>
>>JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.
>>    
>>
>
>Don't tell your customers you removed all the cool stuff.
>Oh wait, they'll find your lkml post through Google...
>
>Lets just hope your marketing folks don't find out about
>this mail. ;)
>
>  
>
Rik,

You're awesome. We don't use XFS, JFS, or SMP for our appliances so 
these changes
have little impact for us.

:-)

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Russell King wrote:

>On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:38:03AM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>  
>
>>On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We 
>>will be contacting
>>individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for 
>>the code we wish to
>>convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will 
>>remain GPL
>>The 50K per copy offer still stands for the whole thing if you guys can 
>>ever figure out
>>how to set something like this up.
>>:-)
>>    
>>
>
>Don't bother contacting me.  I'll give you my answer now.  Refused for
>all work contributed by myself.
>
>  
>
Hadn't gotten that far down the list yet, but thanks for the feedback.  
I put an X through that one.

Jeff

Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Linus Torvalds wrote:

>Ok,
> despite some naming confusion (expanation: I'm a retard), I did end up
>doing the 2.6.9 release today. And it wasn't the same as the "-final" test
>release (see explanation above).
>
>Excuses aside, not a lot of changes since -rc4 (which was the last
>announced test-kernel), mainly some UML updates that don't affect anybody
>else. And a number of one-liners or compiler fixes. Full list appended.
>
>		Linus
>  
>
The memory sickness with disappearing buffers, and the BIO callback 
problems with the
SCSI layer previously reported appear to be corrected. This release is 
very solid and
withstands 400 MB/S I/O to disk from 3GB/1GB split kernel/user memory 
configurations
and does not have the disappearing memory problems I was experiencing 
with massive
BIO/skb I/O loading. The memory pressure being exerted is constant and 
the kernel
holds steady and stable enough for us to use and ship in our products 
based on our
testing of the 2.6.9 release over two days.

On a side note, the GPL buyout previously offered has been modified. We 
will be contacting
individual contributors and negotiating with each copyright holder for 
the code we wish to
convert on a case by case basis. The remaining portions of code will 
remain GPL
The 50K per copy offer still stands for the whole thing if you guys can 
ever figure out
how to set something like this up.
:-)

Although we do not work with them and are in fact on the the other side 
of Unixware from a
competing viewpoint, SCO has contacted us and identifed with precise 
detail and factual
documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was 
taken from Unix.
We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough 
uncertianty to warrant
removal of the infringing portions.

We have identified and removed the infringing portions of Linux for our 
products that
SCO claims was stolen from Unix. They are:

JFS, XFS, All SMP support in Linux, and RCU.

They make claims of other portions of Linux which were taken, however, 
these other claims
do not appear to be supported with factual evidence.

Jeff